You are being watched! Using anthropomorphism to curb customer misbehavior in access-based consumption

Due to the nature of access-based services (i.e., temporal access to a good, no ownership transfer, and no supervision by service personnel), customer misbehavior directed at accessed products is very pervasive, which causes losses to service providers and results in detrimental contagious effects. However, potential strategies that can be used to curb customer misbehavior have not been studied sufficiently. Extending existing theory of customer misbehavior, this research focuses on anthropomorphism as a strategy that may reduce customers’ intention to engage in misbehavior in access-based consumption. Three studies confirm the effectiveness of anthropomorphism in inhibiting customer misbehavior and suggest that this basic effect is mediated by a sense of being watched. Moreover, they indicate that the effects are attenuated for customers with low public self-consciousness. The primary managerial implication of this study is that marketers may suppress customer misbehavior towards shared products by using first-person perspective language or imbuing them with humanlike characteristics such as human voice and human names.