How Motivation Moderates the Effects of Emotions on the Duration of Consumption

Abstract

Several important questions arise concerning the roles of motivation and emotions in determining the duration of consumption—that is, the length of time that consumers devote to consumption experiences. Existing theory and previous findings suggest that consumption duration should: (1) follow an inverted-u relation which peaks at intermediate levels of arousal; (2) increase with pleasure; (3) peak at higher levels of arousal as pleasure increases; and (4) depend more strongly on pleasure for those with an intrinsically motivated enjoyment orientation as opposed to those with an extrinsically motivated task orientation. A main study used 32 musical stimuli varying in their tendencies to evoke pleasure and arousal, manipulated intrinsic/extrinsic motivation by means of verbal instructions in enjoyment-task-oriented conditions, and found support for all four hypotheses, including the key prediction that a positive effect of pleasure on consumption duration as measured by listening time would appear for those in the intrinsically motivated enjoyment condition but would disappear for those in the extrinsically motivated task condition. A subsidiary study helped to rule out competing hypotheses by showing that levels of pleasure and arousal across the musical selections did not differ between the task and enjoyment conditions. In short, this research supports relevant theory, replicates earlier results, and extends previous findings by demonstrating a moderating influence of consumption motivations that encourage or discourage a main effect of pleasure on the duration of consumption.