The relationship between consumers' religiosity and risk perceptions surrounding the use of SNS

Abstract

Religion remains a significant influence on many consumers’ lives, affecting consumer behaviour in terms of moral standards, thoughts, judgments, attitudes, and actions. In previous research, religion has been shown to affect consumer decision making, and ethical judgments towards the marketers and the communication tools they use. However, due to the sensitivity of issues surrounding religious beliefs and actions, religiosity related to consumer behaviour has remained an under-researched area. Furthermore, social networking sites (SNS) such as Twitter and Facebook have become a significant part of millions of lives around the world. The importance of religion and the importance of SNSs in people’s lives provide high possibility for interactive relationships between them. Hence, there is still a need not only to develop a theoretical explanation of how individual religiosity impacts consumer behaviour, but also to improve our theoretical understanding of the relationship between consumers’ religiosity and risk perceptions surrounding the use of SNS. Based on insight from Hunt-Vitell’s General Theory of Marketing Ethics (1986), this paper develops a conceptual argument that aims to improve our theoretical understanding of the relationship between consumers’ religiosity and risk perceptions surrounding the use of SNS.