Understanding the psychological mechanisms and moderating effects of fear of mising out in Vietnamese shopping malls

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Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Consumer Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) has emerged as a pervasive psychological driver of purchasing decisions. In today’s experience-driven retail environment exemplified by Vietnam’s rapidly expanding modern shopping malls, FOMO may prompt consumers to buy impulsively and unplanned. However, most FOMO research focuses on online or social media contexts, leaving its role in offline retail underexplored. This study fills that gap by examining how FOMO influences shoppers’ psychological states and subsequent buying behaviors in Vietnamese malls. We conducted a structured questionnaire survey of 428 mall patrons in Ho Chi Minh City in 2024, and analyzed the data using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results confirm that FOMO significantly heightens consumers’ financial risk-taking, emotional arousal, and reduced self-control. In turn, these states strongly predict purchase behaviors: risk-taking drives impulsive and repeat shopping, emotional arousal fuels impulse, and repeat buying, and diminished self-control leads to unplanned spending. Notably, the strength of these effects varies by consumer segment and context: younger, more tech-savvy shoppers and those in high-end malls showed stronger FOMO effects, and frequent shoppers were especially susceptible. These findings extend FOMO theory into physical retail and offer practical insight: marketers can leverage FOMO cues but must do so ethically, as this tactic powerfully drives consumption. The study concludes that FOMO is a key stimulus in malls, calling for future research to examine its long-term impact and boundary conditions.

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    • Figure 1. Proposed research model of FOMO’s effects on consumer shopping behavior
    • Table 1. Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Reliability assessment (N = 428)
    • Table 2. SEM results and hypothesis testing
    • Table 3. Moderating effects via multi-group SEM
    • Table A1. Model fit summary
    • Table C1. Demographic characteristics
    • Conceptualization
      Nguyen Duy Phuong, Bui Thanh Khoa
    • Data curation
      Nguyen Duy Phuong, Bui Thanh Khoa
    • Formal Analysis
      Nguyen Duy Phuong, Bui Thanh Khoa
    • Funding acquisition
      Nguyen Duy Phuong, Bui Thanh Khoa
    • Investigation
      Nguyen Duy Phuong, Bui Thanh Khoa
    • Methodology
      Nguyen Duy Phuong, Bui Thanh Khoa
    • Project administration
      Nguyen Duy Phuong, Bui Thanh Khoa
    • Resources
      Nguyen Duy Phuong, Bui Thanh Khoa
    • Software
      Nguyen Duy Phuong, Bui Thanh Khoa
    • Supervision
      Nguyen Duy Phuong, Bui Thanh Khoa
    • Writing – original draft
      Nguyen Duy Phuong, Bui Thanh Khoa
    • Writing – review & editing
      Nguyen Duy Phuong, Bui Thanh Khoa
    • Validation
      Bui Thanh Khoa
    • Visualization
      Bui Thanh Khoa