Feeling bored, seeking more? The assimilation and contrast effect of environmental monotony on variety seeking behavior

Abstract

It has been widely documented that contextual factors affect variety-seeking behavior differently. Our research investigates whether environmental monotony, which refers to the extent to which one's living condition (including the physical environment and social environment) remains unchanged and lacks variety, affects actual variety-seeking behavior. Four studies, including two online investigations and two lab experiments, were conducted under the Chinese anti-COVID policies. We found that physical environmental monotony would stimulate variety-seeking behavior as a contrast effect, while social environmental monotony showed an assimilation effect, which reduces variety-seeking. We further revealed that the diverse impact of these two kinds of monotonies was due to opposite changes in the tendency of individuals to be materialistic. Contributions and future directions were also discussed.