From Psychological Distress to Impulse Buying Behavior: Examining Retail Therapy as a Coping Mechanism in E-Commerce

This study investigates the interconnections between loneliness, anxiety, retail therapy coping tendency, emotional regulation capability, and impulse buying behavior in e-commerce settings while assessing retail therapy as a coping route that links psychological distress to unplanned purchases. Drawing on the Transactional Theory of Stress and Coping together with the Process Model of Emotion Regulation, the work positions impulse buying as a behavioral result influenced by psychological distress, shopping oriented coping, and consumers capacity to handle emotional reactions. A quantitative cross-sectional approach gathered responses via a five-point Likert scale questionnaire from 385 adult consumers who had engaged with e-commerce platforms and finalized at least one online purchase within the prior six months. IBM SPSS facilitated reliability checks, exploratory factor analysis, descriptive statistics, and multiple linear regression. Results indicate that loneliness (β = 0.519) and anxiety (β = 0.628) both elevate retail therapy coping tendency, with anxiety exerting the greater impact. Retail therapy coping tendency in turn produces a notable positive effect on impulse buying behavior (β = 0.584), showing that individuals who turn to shopping for emotional relief become more prone to spontaneous acquisitions. By contrast, emotional regulation capability markedly lowers impulse buying behavior (β = −0.605) and registers the largest absolute direct influence. These outcomes demonstrate that online impulse buying stems not merely from platform ease or promotional cues but also from the ways consumers encounter psychological distress and choose methods to manage it. Responsible e-commerce approaches should therefore integrate reflective purchasing tools with consumer education that builds emotional awareness and adaptive regulation skills.