Relation of impulsive urges and sustainable purchase decisions in the personalized environment of social media

The growing adoption of social media has transformed consumption patterns. Mounting evidence asserts the unnecessary spending as one of the key drivers to influence climate change. Excessive consumption is rooted in impulsive shopping, and individuals are inclined to spend due to social media's personalized environment. Extant literature is limited to demonstrate the role of personalized advertising in sustainable purchase decisions. This study makes a novel attempt to explore a possible association between personalized advertising and sustainable purchase decision through a psychological mechanism following the theory of reasoned action and stimulus-organism-response framework. The structural equation modeling analyzing the data of 713 Chinese experienced social media users unveil that personalized advertising positively influences the urge to buy impulsively through the mediation of impulse buying tendency. Mobile shopping attitude stimulates users to buy impulsively though its interaction effect was insignificant. Unexpectedly, impulsive urges positively affect sustainable purchase decisions. Moreover, environmental knowledge lessens the impulsive urges. The neural network analysis indicates the robustness of integrated constructs. (C) 2020 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.