Research Question

Vice product consumption involves substance and behavior that can result in addiction when consumed in an excess amount. This study draws on alcohol as substance vice product and gambling as behavioral vice product. Religion beliefs, accounting for eighty-eight percent of the world population (Johnson and Grim, 2013), is one of the most common sources of self-restrict mechanism for vice product consumption. Allport and Rose (1967) bring up that religiosity, rather than religious beliefs, is the underlying factor affecting individual behaviors. The concepts of “extrinsic religion” and “intrinsic religion” refer to an extrinsically motivated person uses his religion for selfish reasons, while an intrinsically motivated person lives his religion for spiritual objectives (Allport and Ross, 1967). On the other hand, impulsivity involves individual urge and behavior in making tempting choices that go against our maximized self-interest (Patton et al., 1995), which is associated to vice product consumption. In this study, we explore how extrinsic religiosity can impact on vice product consumption through the mediating effect of impulsivity.

Method and Data

Working adults with religions, aging 21 years old or above were invited to fill in an online questionnaire. Two hundred and sixty-one valid questionnaires were collected in total across the four largest cities in China. Measuring scales included the Religious Orientation Scale (Allport and Ross, 1967) and Barratt Impulsiveness Scale BIS-11 (Patton and Stanford, 1995). Drinking urge scale was adopted from Bohn et al. (1995) and gambling urge scale was adopted from Raylu and Oei (2004), while drinking frequency was adopted from Saunders et al. (1993) and gambling frequency was adopted from Neighbors et al. (2002).

Summary and Findings

SEM analysis by AMOS 24.0 shows that extrinsic religiosity is negatively associated with impulsivity (standardized regression coefficient = –.189, p < .001); impulsivity is positively associated with drinking/gambling urges; drinking/gambling urges are positively associated with its consumption frequency respectively.

Mediation effects were also examined through bootstrapping. The indirect effects for extrinsic religiosity and drinking/gambling urges were statistically significant. After controlling the indirect effects, direct effects between extrinsic religiosity and drinking/gambling urges were no longer significant. So, it means that impulsivity fully mediates the relationships between extrinsic religiosity and drinking/ gambling urges.

This study suggests that extrinsic religious followers treasure the utilitarian aspects derived from their religious community. In order to maintain such benefits, followers will eventually behave according to the norms shared by the religious community and adjust their impulsivity to a socially reasonable level (Vitell, 2009), such as reducing their vice product consumption to a socially acceptable level.

Key Contributions

This paper suggests that religiosity can be a potential psychological denominator for future consumer studies. Traditionally, researchers focus more on intrinsic religiosity and its negative effect on vice product consumption. However, it is worth noting that extrinsic religiosity is also an important source of self-regulation in catering the expectation of the religion community.

Second, since most of the vice product research investigates either substance or behavioral vice products, systematic studies in both are rarely found in the marketing literature. The paper explores addictions in both substance and addictive behavior as a whole, which is crucial for marketers to understand the contributor of vice product urge and consumption in a holistic point of view in order to guide reasonable consumption.