Mindfulness and Stage-Wise Self-Regulation in Impulsive Buying: The Moderating Role of Family Life Cycle

Abstract

Online shopping markets have heightened impulse purchases, which in most cases lead to post purchase regrets, economic strain and low consumer satisfaction. Although other researchers have mainly focused on external stimuli that cause impulsive behaviour, little focus has been on the internal psychological processes that allow one to maintain behavioural control. This paper combines the Five Facet Mindfulness model with the Stage Model of Self-Regulated Behaviour Change to test the hypothesis of how mindfulness can assist people to make gradual shifts in the impulse-driven to deliberate buying behaviour, where Family Life Cycle serves as a confounder. Direct, mediated, and moderated relationships between independent and dependent variables were tested using Structural Equation Modelling on cross-sectional survey data of 1, 200 Indian higher education institutions working professionals. The findings suggest that the mindfulness is one of the important predictors of progress through the stages of self-regulation, personal norm, perceived behavioural control, self-efficacy, and maintenance of behaviour. Family Life Cycle balances out major stage specific relationships, emphasizing contextual differences in regulatory capacity. This research brings behavioural self-regulation theory to consumer psychology and also provides practical implications of mindfulness-based consumer education and responsible digital choice design.