Accelerators of consumer anxiety.

Prior research on the antecedents of CA can be broadly categorized into two types: accelerators and mitigators (see Fig 3). Most of the reviewed antecedent research has focused on the accelerators of CA. First, from a personality psychology perspective, enduring individual differences shape how consumers respond to potential threats in consumption environments. Specifically, consumer traits such as materialism [14], ethical beliefs [15], health risk propensity [11], and fear of missing out [16] can give rise to CA.

Second, consumers’ psychological and social experiences serve as critical antecedents of CA. In line with cognitive appraisal theory, CA arises when consumers perceive a consumption environment as uncertain, potentially threatening, and personally relevant. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, exposure to extensive coronavirus-related information, perceived threat and severity, pandemic-induced uncertainty, and perceived scarcity contributed to heightened CA [9,17]. Similarly, rumination about uncertain future events [18] and disruptions in social media environments [19] reinforce threat-focused cognitive appraisals, thereby intensifying CA. Moreover, enjoyment of shopping exacerbates COVID-19-induced CA [20]. According to social comparison theory, negative social comparisons can intensify CA by highlighting perceived gaps in status [4]. Interactions with culturally incongruent consumers may similarly heighten self-consciousness, thereby increasing CA [21]. From the perspective of conservation of resources theory, financial stress and perceived financial scarcity represent direct threats to consumers’ economic resources, prompting heightened CA [22,23]. Furthermore, technological contexts can elicit CA through performance-related concerns. For instance, receiving negative evaluations from AI systems can heighten consumers’ apprehension, thereby intensifying CA [24].

Third, CA is often triggered by consumption experiences. Guided by cognitive appraisal theory, consumption experiences—such as prolonged waiting, service failures, negative brand encounters, or incidental stockouts—can provoke CA by disrupting the expectations of market offerings [25,26]. Moreover, CA may stem from the cognitive appraisal of contemporary consumption experiences. In technology-mediated environments, factors such as information overload, technological paradoxes, and digital fatigue can intensify CA by taxing consumers’ mental resources [27]. Even widely adopted financial innovations, such as mobile payment systems, can elicit CA [28]. Importantly, consumption behaviors themselves may sometimes trigger CA. For example, impulsive buying [10] and extensive health information seeking [13] increase CA. Insights from environmental psychology indicate that elements of the servicescape influence consumers’ emotional responses. Accordingly, service settings characterized by dense crowds, prolonged or repeated interactions, high uncertainty, or complex decision-making requirements can intensify CA [29].

Mitigators of consumer anxiety.

The remaining antecedent studies have investigated factors that mitigate CA. Specifically, consumers with higher technological self-efficacy tend to experience lower levels of CA when they purchase new technology products, in alignment with self-efficacy theory [30]. Similarly, financial self-efficacy serves as a protective resource, enabling consumers—such as African refugees in the southern United States—to effectively manage anxiety in unfamiliar financial environments [22]. Beyond individual capacities, firms’ communication strategies that improve process simulations can lower CA in new product adoption [31]. In cross-cultural customer-to-customer interactions, perceived cultural compatibility functions as a social–cognitive buffer, mitigating CA [21]. Consistent with resilience theory, consumers who engage in voluntary productive activities or who possess greater psychological resilience are less likely to experience heightened CA in response to pandemic-related threats [20]. In addition, trust in external authorities, such as political leadership, similarly reduced CA during the COVID-19 pandemic [18].

Consumer behaviors.

In the literature, CA has been conceptualized as a future-oriented emotional state that triggers psychological arousal and behavioral responses (see Fig 3). Our review reveals that the influence of CA on consumer behaviors is dualistic—it acts as both a promoter and an inhibitor—rather than serving as a uniform driver. This paradox can be understood through theoretical perspectives such as protection motivation theory and social identity theory, which elucidate how consumers cope with perceived risks and social uncertainty. Through the lens of protection motivation theory, CA functions as a threat signal that activates coping motivations in consumption contexts. These consumption behaviors are expected to mitigate psychological discomfort or restore the feeling of control, thereby stimulating protective or compensatory actions. For example, anxious consumers may resort to hoarding, compulsive buying, or impulsive spending as coping mechanisms to mitigate perceived uncertainty or restore emotional equilibrium [10,16,17]. Similarly, CA can heighten motivations for retail therapy, subsequently fueling “revenge buying” [32], or increase purchase intentions related to emotion regulation and quantity-based buying [9,18]. Within the broader context of ontological insecurity, CA can drive adaptive consumption, such as the purchase of essentials, entertainment, investment products, or self-care items that help restore psychological stability [19]. Furthermore, CA can motivate consumers to seek informational or social resources, thereby promoting advice-seeking behaviors [12] and knowledge purchases as coping strategies [33]. In risk-related consumption contexts, anxiety may further encourage protective or prosocial actions, including health-protective behaviors, compliance with pandemic measures, and pro-environmental consumption [13,34,35]. These findings suggest that when consumption is perceived as an effective coping strategy, CA activates protective motivations that translate into increased marketplace engagement.

Moreover, protection motivation theory helps explain the inhibitory effect of CA on consumer behavior. When perceived threat outweighs consumers’ coping appraisal or when purchasing is perceived as generating additional risk, consumers are more likely to withdraw and engage in avoidance behaviors. Specifically, CA related to numerical processing or financial decision-making can lead consumers to avoid price computation or financial management tasks [36,37]. Similarly, CA diminishes consumers’ willingness to adopt unfamiliar innovations (e.g., self-service technologies), discourages in-store purchases, and reduces the adoption of new products under conditions of high uncertainty [38,39]. In contexts such as pandemic-induced risk, heightened CA may further suppress travel intentions or other discretionary consumption activities [2,11]. This pattern indicates that when CA amplifies perceived threat without providing efficient coping strategies, consumers are likely to respond with behavioral inhibition.

Complementing these coping-based insights, social identity theory sheds light on the social dimension of anxious consumption. CA often stems from concerns about social evaluation, belonging, or identity threats, prompting proactive behaviors aimed at protecting or restoring consumers’ social standing. In these contexts, consumers may increase their engagement with socially visible consumption or digital platforms—including heightened use of social media and conversational AI systems—which can, in turn, trigger impulsive purchasing behaviors [4,40]. Social CA may also foster reliance on intermediated services, such as online-to-offline delivery applications, which enable consumers to sustain social participation while reducing the perceived risks of direct interpersonal interaction [41]. However, when CA impairs consumer confidence in social judgment—such as concerns about appearance or reputation—it may instead suppress behaviors such as electronic word-of-mouth sharing and online purchasing of identity-relevant products [25,42]. Furthermore, elevated CA can erode key indicators of customer–firm relationship quality, including brand loyalty, repatronage intentions, and positive word-of-mouth [2,4]. These findings suggest that when consumption functions as an effective coping mechanism or a means of restoring social identity, CA tends to enhance market engagement. Conversely, when CA heightens perceived risk, cognitive load, or concerns about social evaluation, it inhibits participation in consumer behaviors.

Cognition and emotion.

Anxiety also has pervasive effects on consumers’ cognitive and affective processes. In accordance with cognitive appraisal theory, anxious consumers frequently experience diminished perceived control and self-efficacy relative to their nonanxious counterparts [13,23]. When buying beauty products, social appearance-related CA erodes perceived control [42]. Consumers experiencing CA often perceive market offerings as less attractive or fair, a trend observed in both traditional pricing evaluations [36] and reactions to negative AI feedback [24]. Similarly, technology-infused service research reveals that CA diminishes the perceived ease of use of online platforms, reduces the enjoyment and convenience of mobile payment systems, and amplifies postpurchase dissonance [30,43]. Moreover, CA interferes with consumers’ decision-making capacities [12], reduces their trust in firms [2,4], and narrows their attentional focus, causing consumers to allocate disproportionate amounts of cognitive resources to hedonic options while experiencing cognitive overload [44]. This effect extends to interactions with AI systems, where CA increases rumination during the use of conversational AI [40]. Furthermore, CA heightens loneliness during the use of online-to-offline delivery applications [41] and conversational AI [40]. In addition, CA enhances depression in financial service settings [22] and escapism in retail contexts [10]. Notably, consumers with mortality-related anxiety are more likely to experience environmental concerns [35].

Attitudes and preferences.

Compared with nonanxious consumers, anxious consumers constitute a heterogeneous group with diverse attitudes and preferences. For example, CA positively affects green purchase attitudes [35] and green product preferences [23]. Moreover, since socially anxious consumers have neutral and distant relationships, they prefer text messages over voice calls [45]. In addition, anxious consumers tend to choose products that demonstrate social affiliation for protection [12].

Theoretical lens in consumer anxiety research.

Prior research has investigated CA through several theoretical lenses, including anxiety/uncertainty management theory, affect-as-information theory, ontological security theory [19], and theories on control and coping [2,53]. Although these theoretical explorations have added insightful contributions to the CA literature, additional theories could be introduced to examine the various roles of anxiety in consumers’ lives. In examining CA from social perspectives, identity-based theories can be considered [55]. For example, social identity theory can help us understand how CA emerges within consumption environments involving social judgments and group exclusion [3]. Moreover, anxiety, as part of the motivational system [61], can govern consumption behavior; therefore, future research could use protection motivation theory to investigate the driving effect of CA on consumer behavior. Furthermore, vulnerable consumers have attracted increasing academic attention [5]. According to stereotype threat theory [46], some consumption experiences may activate negative stereotypes among vulnerable consumers, thereby accelerating CA. In addition, regulatory focus theory could help explain the behaviors of anxious consumers because anxiety may be related to a prevention focus in which vigilance is maintained [62]. Future studies could also empirically examine the linkages among regulatory focus, CA, and consumer behavior.

Research directions for consumer anxiety.

Outcomes of consumer anxiety: This scoping review revealed that more than half of CA studies have explored the consequences of CA. Nevertheless, several critical outcome variables have not yet been examined. For instance, the current literature shows that CA promotes certain consumer behaviors while inhibiting others. Therefore, further academic efforts are needed to elucidate the dual effects of CA on consumer behavior. For instance, future research could examine the factors that moderate the relationship between CA and distinct consumption patterns, such as impulsive consumption versus avoidant consumption. Moreover, the outcomes of CA in service recovery have not yet been examined. Investigating the effects of CA on different recovery strategies may provide detailed insights into consumers’ complex emotional reactions to service failures. Considering that CA entails economic, temporal, and psychological costs for consumers, future research could further examine the effect of CA on consumer well-being, and vice versa. With the rapid advancement of STARA technologies (smart technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and algorithms), exploring the connections between CA, technology dependence, and human–AI reliance imbalance is a key avenue for future research. Additionally, further investigation is needed to clarify the ethical consequences of CA-driven technology adoption, such as dehumanization, moral disengagement, and moral decoupling.

Antecedents of consumer anxiety: The current knowledge network of CA highlights several promising avenues for future research, particularly its antecedents. For example, multiple studies have examined how individual predispositions act as accelerators of CA. Consumers may vary in their susceptibility or resilience to anxiety. However, several important chronic traits have not yet been considered (e.g., sociability, optimism, and compassion) [2]. Moreover, more detailed insights into the relationships between CA and demographic characteristics are needed. For example, scholars have suggested that young consumers exhibit high susceptibility to anxiety. In addition, STARA technologies (e.g., service robots and intelligent personal assistants) are being increasingly deployed by firms, shaping the ways in which consumers receive market offerings [5]. The increasing deployment of STARA technologies may engender new accelerators of CA [66], such as AI decision aids, algorithmic opacity, autonomy loss, unconsented surveillance, and privacy breaches.

Our review found that only thirteen studies have examined factors that alleviate CA, thus highlighting the need for further research on its mitigators. Some studies have discussed the social impacts of CA and established its significance for consumer well-being [2]. If anxiety is considered a negative indicator of quality of life, investigating ways to reduce CA for improved consumer well-being is warranted. Moreover, more attention should be given to the effects of marketing tactics on CA in a transforming era. Scholars have argued that loneliness predicts CA [67]. Thus, loneliness-reducing services or products may have the potential to hold CA. In addition, firms’ marketing tactics can both engender and manage CA. However, the roles of anxiety-provoking and anxiety-alleviating marketing tactics in CA have yet been adequately examined.

The reviewed studies have also established CA as a central intervening mechanism bridging diverse precursors and consumer outcomes (see Fig 3). Despite these theoretical advances, several promising research avenues remain underexplored. Future studies should move beyond single-path models toward dynamic, multistage frameworks that capture how different forms of CA transmit, amplify, or redirect the effects of consumption-related stimuli across contexts and over time. Our scoping review demonstrates that CA functions as a context-sensitive boundary condition (see Table 2). However, research examining the conditions under which CA functions as an amplifier versus an inhibitor of consumer reactions remains limited. Moreover, CA may interact with personality traits, further influencing key customer outcomes, such as consumption evaluation and customer–firm relationships. Hence, future research could examine how CA shapes the effects of individual differences, thereby offering a more nuanced understanding of consumer responses.

Operationalizations of consumer anxiety.

The operationalizations of CA take different forms in the reviewed studies. Most reviewed studies have treated CA as a unitary construct and explored state anxiety emerging from different consumption contexts [9,62,60]. However, the literature has acknowledged that trait anxiety is a major component of personality [30]. Hence, it is important to examine how both transient and chronic anxiety influence consumer behavior to uncover the diverse roles of CA. Furthermore, most reviewed studies treat CA as a homogeneous emotional state and often rely on generalized anxiety scales [47], although some studies use more specialized measures such as computer anxiety or pandemic-related travel anxiety. Employing context-specific measures of CA improves construct validity, reliability, and predictive power, yielding clearer and more precise insights into the phenomenon. Accordingly, the use of tailored CA measures is recommended to better capture its diverse effects and spillover influences on consumer decision-making.

Methodologies in consumer anxiety research.

With respect to methodology, the majority of CA studies (n = 37) have employed a survey to collect consumer data [27]. While the strengths and limitations of survey methodology have been recognized, future research on CA should prioritize experimental designs, with particular emphasis on field experiments, to strengthen causal inference and enhance the ecological validity of the findings. An increasing number of consumer researchers have asserted that CA should be treated as a transient emotion [13]. However, our review indicates that existing studies rarely employ research designs capable of capturing the dynamic fluctuations of CA, revealing a critical methodological gap in the literature. Compared with retrospective self-report measures, field experiments allow researchers to assess anxiety more precisely and establish stronger causal inferences, thereby generating deeper insights into CA. Moreover, longitudinal research helps assess whether CA-induced impulsive consumption evolves into compulsive consumption or subsequent avoidance [4]. Future research could employ longitudinal designs to track the habituation of CA and examine how it influences consumer behavior over time. In addition, as the CA literature evolves, additional empirical studies examining specific topics or the strength and direction of relationships between variables will provide sufficient evidence for calculating effect sizes in meta-analyses, representing a promising avenue for future research.