Flow and Happiness: The Major Drive of BTS Fan ARMY’s Voluntary Pro-social Behaviors

Abstract

There has been a consensus that the material values are globally growing among young generations, which may harm the environment. In the mist of little empirical efforts about how to motivate consumers to move away from such materialistic consumption, a few recent studies of flow experience and happiness help us shed lights on this issue. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a high level of flow experience influences their subjective well-beings (e.g., life satisfaction, self-esteem), which lead to elevate their pro-social attitudes and behaviors. This study set fandom as the context of consumers’ immersion experiences, particularly focusing on BTS ARMY, one of the most committed fandom in the world. A survey results revealed that a high flow experience more enhanced subjective well-beings, pro-social attitudes, and behaviors than a low flow in general. The interaction effects between flow experience and fandom on self-esteem, pro-social attitudes, and behaviors were also significant. The results imply the benefit of having high flow experiences from being away from the material consumption while focusing on fans