Construal level theory: Theoretical framework and affect process in consumer behaviors

Abstract

As we all know, people is self-centered in a degree. But how do people jump out of here and now and make a decision for the future, understand from others' perspective, or even take hypothetical alternatives into account? It refers to the question that how psychological distance affects consumers' thought and behaviors. Construal level theory (CLT) has emerged as an explanation of this effect mechanism proposing that people do that by making abstract mental construals of distal events. Researches have shown that different dimensions of psychological distance affect people's mental construal in a similar principle and the construal, in turn, guide evaluation, preference, prediction, decision making and other consumer behaviors. This paper reviews the antecedent researches and conducts a systematic analysis of the empirical findings from prior CLT literatures. Specifically, we firstly summarize the antecedent literatures and develop a whole theory frame of CLT. Then we classify the massive empirical findings to support our framework and some nuclear propositions. Finally, we discuss the limitations of present studies and conclude with many implications from the empirical findings for further research.