Beyond Helping: The Role of Psychological Distance in Cause-Related Product Buying Decision

Psychological distance has been established as a key antecedent to social and temporal related decision-making among consumers, along with the presentation of marketing stimuli. While much of these factors studied in the context of social helping and donation are either social psychological distance variables or emotional states of consumers, research has yet to explore the cross-national differences in how social and other dimensions of psychological distance affect social cause-related buying decision. Using data from two countries in Europe and East Asia, we demonstrate that all four dimensions of psychological distance affect consumer cause-related product purchase decisions in different country contexts.