Maintaining the order: How social crowding promotes minimalistic consumption practice

Although minimalism has come to the forefront of contemporary consumer culture, neither its antecedents nor the psychological process that drives minimalistic consumption have been systematically established in the literature. This study documents a novel effect of social crowding, one common environmental cue, on minimalistic consumption practice. Across five experimental studies, we explore how exposure to social crowding motivates consumers to engage in minimalistic consumption as a means of coping with their experience of chaos and maintaining their psychological need for order. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the uncovered effects do not occur when a crowded environment is composed of familiar in-group members or when consumers have an interdependent self-construal. The findings therefore not only provide novel insights that extend the literature but also have certain implications for corporations seeking to promote minimalistic consumption practice.