Personality and consumption: The explanation of shopping addiction based on impulsive traits in consumers in Natal – RN

This study aims to address the issue of impulsivity and shopping addiction. Considering that psychological variables, especially personality traits, are decisive for the evaluation of human behavior, especially in potential consumers, hypothetically, it is assumed that one of the major consequences of impulsivity is the cause of poor consumption management, consecutively, the form of economic handling, which is justified by the evaluation between the constructs (Alves & Dias, 2019; Alves, 2022; Gonçalves, 2021). 221 consumers over the age of 18 in the city of Natal-RN participated in the study. The sample was evaluated in the GPower 3.2 statistical package, which presented statistical indicators that ensured that the 'n' collected was sufficient to carry out the research. The study consisted of sending questionnaires via Google Docs , consisting of the Barratt Impulsivity Scale (Barratt & Patton, 1983; Pechorro et al., 2017), Dickman Impulsivity Scale (Dickman, 1990), Shopping Addiction Scale (Andreassen et al., 2015) and Demographic and Economic Questionnaire. The findings of this study revealed that the scales were reliable, with alphas above the expected psychometric criterion (> 0.70), ensuring the consistency of the constructs in the collected sample. It is noteworthy that the established theoretical model was refuted, giving rise to an alternative model, which was corroborated, namely: Barratt impulsivity influenced Dickman impulsivity (l = 0.85), with the latter variable influencing shopping addiction (l = 0.82), with all positive associations. An ANOVA was performed, associated with the Scheffé post-hoc test , with the results revealing that the mean scores were significant for the direct effect of Barratt and Dickman Impulsivity, which presented higher scores in relation to shopping addiction. Also, a significant result was observed in the interaction effect of Barratt Impulsivity versus Dickman Impulsivity with higher scores at the high level of these constructs in relation to shopping addiction.