The Effects of Personal and National Animosity on the Persistence of Boycotts Against Japanese Seafood: The Moderating Role of Conspicuous Consumption

This study explored the factors influencing Korean and Chinese consumers' boycott persistence of Japanese seafood products following the Fukushima contaminated water release in 2023. Unlike previous studies that primarily focused on boycott participation intentions, this study examined boycott persistence by testing the differential effects of personal animosity and national animosity and analyzing the moderating effect of conspicuous consumption tendency. A survey was conducted with a total of 770 consumers (273 Korean and 497 Chinese), and hierarchical regression analysis was performed separately for the full sample, Korean consumer sample, and Chinese consumer sample. The results showed that both personal animosity and national animosity had significant positive effects on boycott persistence, with national animosity showing a stronger influence. In particular, for Korean consumers, national animosity had a much stronger effect than personal animosity, showing the largest gap among the three samples. In contrast, Chinese consumers showed considerably higher personal animosity than Korean consumers, demonstrating that individual-level animosity based on micro-level experiences also substantially influences boycott persistence. Analysis of the moderating effect of conspicuous consumption tendency revealed that the interaction term with personal animosity showed significant negative moderating effects across all three samples. This indicates that higher conspicuous consumption tendency weakens the positive effect of personal animosity on boycott persistence. However, differences emerged across samples in the interaction with national animosity. For Korean consumers, conspicuous consumption tendency did not moderate the effect of national animosity, while for Chinese consumers, conspicuous consumption tendency significantly weakened even the effect of national animosity. This study contributes academically by identifying the differential effects of personal and national animosity on boycott persistence and the culture-specific moderating effects of conspicuous consumption tendency. Practically, it provides implications that firms need to accurately diagnose the type of animosity to establish differentiated response strategies by market and strategically utilize conspicuous consumption segments according to market-specific consumer characteristics.