I am interested in affective and motivational aspects of excessive buying (also known as compulsive buying). Compared to problem gambling, excessive buying has received relatively little attention by behavioural researchers partly due to the lack of public funding programs. However, excessive buying can cause serious problems among many consumers especially because buying is considered harmless everyday behaviour in our society.
A revised tool for assessing compulsive buying: 4 dimensions
In a paper published in 2023, we re-visited the Pathological Buying Screener (PBS), one of the popular self-report scales for assessing the intensity of buying addictions and screening pathological buyers (Mueller et al., 2016), which consisted of 13 items that belong to either the excessive buying or the loss-of-control/negative consequences factor.
Starting from the initial 20-item pool used by Mueller et al., we came up with a brief, seven-item scale consisting of four subscales: Excessive buying, Phenomenology (subjective experience associated with excessive buying), Financial Problems and Interpersonal Problems. The new scale, termed the 4-Factor Pathological Buying Scale (4F-PBS), was developed and validated with two large English-speaking Canadian samples. In examining the relationship among the four subscales in a structural model (See the below figure), we noted the importance of the subscale of subjective experience (phenomenology) of excessive buying, which reflects frequent preoccupation with buying, buying urges, and the use of buying to deal with negative feelings. People who frequently experience these are likely to have excessive/compulsive buying problems even if they do not currently experience a great deal of financial or interpersonal problems.
You can try out the 4F-PBS below and see where you stand along the four subscales. If you are a researcher, you may download the pdf of the scale as well.
Yi, S. & Baumgartner, H. (2024). A 4-Factor Revision of the Pathological Buying Screener: The Structure of Compulsive Buying and its Relationship with Five Personal Characteristics. International Journal of Addiction and Mental Health, online first. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-023-01116-9
Coping vs. Enhancement motives of excessive buying
Researchers are recently indicating that excessive buying may not only be driven by the chronic motive of coping with chronic negative feelings (i.e., coping motive) but also by the motive of extending or enhancing positive feelings (i.e., enhancement motive). In another recent paper, we reported the development and validation of the Affective Buying Motives Questionnaire (ABMQ) consisting of the coping motive and the enhancement motive of excessive buying. Furthermore, we found that compared with enhancement motive, coping motive was much more strongly associated with the dimensions of phenomenology of pathological, international problems and financial problems (from the 4F-PBS). In contrast, enhancement and coping motive were similarly associated with the dimension of excessive buying. The findings indicate that the motive of buying to escape negative feelings is more strongly indicative of pathological [clinical] level of excessive buying.
You may try out the ABMQ below and see where you stand on the coping and enhancement motives of excessive buying. If you are a researcher, you may download the pdf of the scale as well.
Yi, S., O’Connor, R., Baumgartner, H. (2025). The Association between Coping and Enhancement Motives of Buying and Four Distinct Dimensions of Pathological Buying. International Journal of Mental Health & Addiction, Forthcoming, DOI to be added.
Are you a Moderate-risk buyer or a Compulsive buyer?
In fact, the cluster of excessive buyers with high enhancement motive (but low on coping motive) reported in the ABMQ manuscript bears a striking similarity to “moderate-risk buyers” we took the case for in our earlier paper. In 2016, we operationalized moderate-risk buyers as those who score 21-24 on Ridgway et al.’s (2008) Richmond Compulsive Buying Scale (RCBS), separate from compulsive buyers whose score exceeded 25 and were deemed to suffer a great deal of problems due to their buying. We found that unlike compulsive buyers, moderate-risk buyers frequently experience boredom rather than sadness or anxiety prior to buying lapses. You may download the Inventory of Affective States
Jung, J., & Yi, S. (2016). The case for moderate-risk buyers: An empirical investigation. Psychiatry Research, 240, 300-307. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2016.04.063
Feeling states preceding your impulse buying episodes
Furthermore, we assessed the heterogeneity of compulsive buyers based on the type of emotions they frequently experience prior to their buying lapses. For this, we adapted the Inventory of Gambling Situations (Littman-Sharp, Turner, & Toneatto, 2009) to excessive buying and developed the Inventory of Affective Situations of Buying Lapses (IASBL). The IASBL assesses how frequently individuals experience negative affect, boredom and positive affect prior to buying things a lot more than intended. You may download a copy of the IASBL below and try it out!
Jung, J., & Yi, S. (2014). Assessment of heterogeneity of compulsive buyers based on affective antecedents of buying lapses. Addiction Research & Theory, 22(1), 37–48. https://doi.org/10.3109/16066359.2012.756475
Subtyping of excessive buyers based on compulsivity and impulsivity
We also subtyped excessive buyers based impulsivity and compulsivity dimensions based on the Ridgway et al.’s (2008) Richmond Compulsive Buying Scale (RCBS). The cluster of buyers who were high on both compulsivity and impulsivity (Cluster II in the figure below) was found to have more severe buying-related problems than the cluster with high impulsivity and low compulsivity.
Excessive buying and other addictive behaviours at the time of Covid-19
Lastly, in collaboration with Aniko Maraz, a European researcher based in the Humboldt University of Berlin at the time of research conductance, I investigated the impact of Covid-19 outbreak on excessive buying and other addictive behaviours.
Maraz, A., & Yi, S. (2022). Compulsive buying gradually increased during the first six months of the Covid-19 outbreak. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 11(1), 88–101. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.2022.00002
Kovács, L. N., Katzinger, E., Yi, S., Demetrovics, Z., Maraz, A., & Kökönyei, G. (2022). Emotion-focused coping mediates the relationship between COVID-related distress and compulsive buying. PloS One, 17(9), e0274458–e0274458. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274458
Maraz, A., Katzinger, E., & Yi, S. (2021). Potentially addictive behaviours increase during the first six months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 10(4), 912–919. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.2021.00079