1. IntroductionConspicuous consumption is an act of acquisition and possession by consumers in order to expand themselves and expect others to perceive them in the way they want [1]. Studies have shown that excessive conspicuous consumption can lead to depression, helplessness, anxiety, and even self-injurious behavior, which can seriously jeopardize physical and mental health, values, and property security [2]. Previous studies exploring the causes of conspicuous consumption in non-social media contexts are relatively mature and have analyzed external contextual factors and consumer psychological factors, which include reference group influence, brand association, the rarity of goods, and social exclusion [1,3], and consumer psychological factors, which include opposite-sex attraction, status concern, ego, materialism, and face consciousness [4,5]. In contrast, only a few studies have explored the causes of conspicuous consumption in social media contexts; as shown in Table 1, Bazi et al. [3] find that consumers interact with luxury brands on social media in order to improve status and face and achieve self-consistency. Siepmann et al. [6] argue that low self-esteem leads individuals to develop a need to display their status. However, most of these studies have been conducted from the perspective of consumer psychology, such as materialism, the pursuit of uniqueness, and self-esteem [3,7,8].Cyber-ostracism is a new form of social exclusion derived from real social exclusion with the development of online technology [14]. As a common experience in the process of using social media, cyber-ostracism threatens users’ sense of belonging, self-esteem, sense of control, and the basic need for a meaningful existence and has a strong and lasting impact on individual psychosocial adaptation [15]. Currently, cyber-ostracism is widely available on Facebook [16], Twitter, Instagram [17], and virtual social media platforms [18,19]. Individuals who suffer from cyber-ostracism choose to withdraw from social interactions to protect themselves [20], and cyber-ostracism disrupts individuals’ emotional and psychological well-being, feel more negative emotions, and significantly increases the risk of depression [21]. Existing studies have explored the impact of cyber-ostracism on consumption behavior, but mostly from the perspective of relational needs for belonging and self-esteem [22]. Liu et al. [23] argue that the negative emotions associated with cyber-ostracism can weaken individuals’ feelings and perceptions of their surroundings and reduce their sense of control. Mandel et al. [24] find that when control is threatened, individuals will compensate through various behaviors to regain control. Conspicuous consumption allows individuals to gain recognition and acceptance from reference groups, enhance their self-image, and demonstrate prestige to others [21].In addition, individuals’ perceptions of the external environment and emotional changes during social media use are influenced by their level of social media use intensity [25]. Social media use intensity refers to the level of engagement, emotional connection, and integration of users in different social media. Social media use intensity is effective in reducing social anxiety and increasing life satisfaction and self-esteem [26]. Compared to low social media intensity users, high social media intensity users experienced less negative emotions and lower uncertainty about the outside world after being rejected online [25]. In studies related to consumer behavior, the difference in the degree of influence brought by individual consumer differences cannot be ignored [27,28].Implicit personality is the essential understanding of human characteristics, and it has been shown that consumers’ implicit personality can influence consumers’ behavioral decisions; entity theorists tend to choose products that express themselves without effort compared to gradualism [29]. Based on implicit personality theory, entity theorists believe that things are fixed, and they believe it is important to show and prove themselves to the outside world, so they tend to purchase showy goods that can directly and quickly enhance their status, whereas incremental theorists are more inclined to enhance their self-worth through their own efforts to learn. Therefore, in social media contexts, implicit personality can also, to some extent, explain the different consumer behavior responses that different individuals choose to adopt when faced with cyber-ostracism.

Therefore, based on the compensatory control theory, this paper proposes a mediating effect of sense of control in social media contexts, i.e., when individuals suffer from cyber-ostracism, their sense of control decreases, and individuals often respond to the resulting threat by compensatory consumption to enhance their sense of control, and they are more inclined to purchase conspicuous products that display their status and position to demonstrate their control and power. Meanwhile, this study introduces the variables of social media use intensity and implicit personality as moderators to explore their roles in the relationship between cyber-ostracism and conspicuous consumption.

The theoretical contributions of this study are as follows: (1) From a psychological perspective, the impact of cyber-ostracism on conspicuous consumption in social media contexts is explored. Since the research on conspicuous consumption in the field of social media is still in its infancy, this research extends social exclusion to social media contexts and further effectively extends the research findings on the influence of cyber-ostracism on conspicuous consumption in the field of consumer behavior; (2) Using compensatory control theory, the mediating role of a psychological resource, the sense of control, was found between cyber-ostracism and conspicuous consumption, which provides a new theoretical perspective to explain how cyber-ostracism affects conspicuous consumption and expands the research on the sense of control; (3) This study demonstrates the moderating role of social media use intensity in the effect of cyber-ostracism on individuals’ sense of control, further enriching and expanding the research on social media use intensity; (4) The moderating variable of implicit personality was introduced to consider the variability of different users’ responses to cyber-ostracism, enriching the study of implicit personality’s consumption behavior in response to cyber-ostracism under social media use scenarios.

The practical contributions of this study are as follows: (1) With the increase in the number of communication media and the prevalence of conspicuous consumption on social media, this study helps consumers to better understand their consumption behavior in social media situations and the mechanisms behind it. (2) For businesses operating through social media platforms, corporate marketers can analyze social media data to understand consumers’ cyber-ostracism experiences and implicit personality orientations, and use appropriate marketing guidance to transform the negative effects of online social rejection into positive effects that create self-empowerment and change, thereby build more lasting relationships with consumers.

5. Discussion 5.1. General Discussion

This study empirically investigates how cyber-ostracism affects consumers’ conspicuous consumption in the context of social media use. We tested the relationship between cyber-ostracism, sense of control, conspicuous consumption, social media use intensity, and implicit personality, supported by the sense of control compensation theory, and the results of the hypothesis testing are shown below.

H1 examined the main effect of cyber-ostracism on conspicuous consumption, and this hypothesis was verified through data analysis. The results of this study suggest that with the popularity of social media, which has become part of the daily life of many people, social exclusion extends to the online environment. In social media contexts, there is a significant positive relationship between the cyber-ostracism experienced by an individual and the individual’s tendency to consume conspicuously. H2 examined the relationship between cyber-ostracism and sense of control, and this hypothesis was supported, indicating that cyber-ostracism leads to a decrease in an individual’s sense of control. H3 examines the relationship between a sense of control and conspicuous consumption, and this hypothesis is also verified, suggesting that when consumers’ sense of control decreases, they are more inclined to conspicuous consumption for the purpose of improving their state of being under threat. Based on compensatory control theory, we propose H4 to examine the mediating role of the sense of control between cyber-ostracism and conspicuous consumption, and this hypothesis is supported, which indicates that consumers will experience different degrees of cyber-ostracism in the process of using social media, and cyber-ostracism will reduce consumers’ sense of control, and in order to compensate for their image needs, consumers are more likely to generate conspicuous consumption. In conjunction with the social media context, we chose the variable of social media use intensity as a moderating variable. H5 examined the moderating effect of social media use intensity on the relationship between cyber-ostracism and sense of control, and this hypothesis was tested, suggesting that social media use intensity was effective in mitigating the negative emotions felt by individuals and weakening the negative effect of cyber-ostracism on perceptions of control. H6 further examined the effect of implicit personality as an individual personality trait on consumption behavior, and this hypothesis was supported, suggesting that individuals with different implicit personalities would adopt different consumption behaviors to restore their sense of control when they are in a state of reduced control, and that entity theorists preferred conspicuous consumption to compensate for their sense of control compared to incremental theorist. H7 further examined the moderating effect of implicit personality on the mediating role of sense of control between cyber-ostracism and conspicuous consumption, and this hypothesis was also verified, implying that implicit personality moderates the mediating role of sense of control between cyber-ostracism and conspicuous consumption, i.e., the more individuals tend to be entity theorists, the stronger the mediating role of sense of control between cyber-ostracism and conspicuous consumption.

In addition, from Model 2 in Table 7, the moderating effect of implicit personality on the negative relationship between cyber-ostracism and a sense of control is not significant. The reason may be that when an individual is in a situation of self-threat, both the theorists and the incremental theorists can feel out of control and want to quickly restore their sense of control over the outside world. In practice, only the concrete performance of regaining the sense of control may be different between them. Theorists are more inclined to buy goods that can quickly improve their status and image, while incremental theorists think that the compensation of status consumption for their image is only temporary and difficult to maintain for a long time. They are more inclined to improve their ability through their own hard work to regain their sense of control [40,61].Moreover, from Model 5 in Table 7, the moderating effect of implicit personality on the negative relationship between cyber-ostracism and conspicuous consumption is not significant. The reason may be that when being rejected by the network society, both the theorists and the incremental theorists will fight back, and they will make conspicuous consumption to deal with the rejection of the network society. However, there are still differences in the logic of behavior strategies between the two. Theorists will think that these behaviors are determined by the immutable personality traits of others, so they tend to take punitive and retaliatory measures. However, when faced with personal setbacks or failures, incremental theorists tend to adopt mastery-oriented responses, which are manifested by persisting in efforts, recognizing the specific causes of setbacks, and seeking new strategies to solve problems [48,66]. That is to say, when being rejected by the network society, both the theorists and the incremental theorists will take actions to respond and prove to improve their status, but in essence, they are conspicuous behaviors, that is, the punishment measures of the theorists and the efforts of the incremental theorists are conspicuous consumption. For example, the theorists prefer to show expensive luxury goods they directly buy through social media, while the incremental theorists prefer to show the products that they personally bought and actively participated in the efforts to make on social media.

Overall, this study provides an in-depth study of the causes of conspicuous consumption in the social media environment, which is of great value for the future development of young global consumers’ consumption perceptions and psychological qualities in the social media environment. It also has positive implications for social media marketing strategies and the construction of sustainable consumption environments for businesses around the world.

5.2. Theoretical ImplicationsFirst, our study makes some contributions to the literature related to social exclusion and conspicuous consumption. While existing studies have done more in-depth and comprehensive research on non-social media contexts and have explored the effects of social exclusion on conspicuous consumption, the exploration of conspicuous consumption in social media use contexts has mostly focused on individual psychological factors such as materialism, the pursuit of uniqueness, and sense of face [3,7,8,11] while ignoring the important external contextual factor of cyber-ostracism present in social media. This study builds on the existing literature by identifying the variable of cyber-ostracism in the context of the times, extending the findings of social exclusion to the online environment, and extending the study of cyber-ostracism on consumer behavior to the specific consumption behavior of conspicuous consumption. This study concludes that individuals experience different degrees of cyber-ostracism in the process of using social media. Cyber-ostracism leads to threatened individual needs, and in order to cope with the threatened state, individuals increase their attention to social status and class and then choose to consume conspicuously to satisfy their threatened psychological needs, to arouse others’ attention to themselves, and to compensate for their own image. This result enriches the research findings on the relationship between cyber-ostracism and specific consumption behaviors and their mechanisms of action in the field of consumption behavior.Second, we have also contributed to the literature on the sense of control. In recent years, experts in the field of consumer behavior have been interested in the sense of control. Previous research on the sense of control has shown that individuals’ lack of control leads to compensatory consumption; for example, when individuals are in a state of low control, consumers are more likely to purchase high-priced luxury goods or big-ticket items [72]. The findings of this study confirm this view and extend this result to the specific consumption behavior of conspicuous consumption, expanding the research results in the field of sense of control in consumer behavior. In addition, this study proposes a new theoretical component in the field of sense of control based on previous research, that is, cyber-ostracism reduces consumers’ sense of control, and in order to compensate for their psychological needs, individuals choose to consume show-off to enhance their sense of control. This study confirms that a sense of control serves as a mediator between cyber-ostracism and conspicuous consumption, which provides a new theoretical perspective to explain how cyber-ostracism affects conspicuous consumption and helps expand the research related to the sense of control.Third, we enriched and expanded the literature on social media use intensity. Previous studies have generally concluded that social media use intensity has negative effects on individuals and that excessive social media use intensity can increase individuals’ stress and negative emotions and even lead to depression [25,73]. In contrast, this study takes the perspective of the positive effects of social media use intensity and argues that social media use intensity can effectively alleviate the social anxiety individuals feel in the online environment, leading to differences in the degree of negative emotions individuals feel, which in turn affects the impact of cyber-ostracism on the sense of control. This study explored this boundary condition and confirmed that social media use intensity plays a moderating role in the association between cyber-ostracism and individuals’ sense of control. The impact of cyber-ostracism on the sense of control varies depending on the intensity level of social media use, which to some extent, explains the different reactions of different individuals to cyber-ostracism. When individuals with low social media use intensity experienced cyber-ostracism, the effect of cyber-ostracism on the sense of control was more significant due to the higher perceived social anxiety. However, this relationship was not significant for individuals with high social media use intensity because the social media use intensity effectively alleviated the anxiety caused by cyber-ostracism.Finally, we enriched the research on the consumer behavior of implicit personality in response to cyber-ostracism in social media use scenarios. Previous research has demonstrated that implicit personality can influence consumers’ attitudes, choices, and decisions [74]. This study incorporates social media use scenarios, and the results show that when individuals suffer from cyber-ostracism, entity theorists develop a stronger tendency to consume in an ostentatious manner than incremental theorists. Entity theorists tend to change their negative status through conspicuous consumption without effort, whereas incremental theorists still believe that ability improvement is more important. This study confirms that different implicit personalities of consumers differ significantly in their information processing styles and concerns, providing theoretical support for further understanding individual differentiation of conspicuous consumption in social media contexts from the perspective of personality traits. 5.3. Practical Implications

First, the study examines the impact of cyber-ostracism on conspicuous consumption in the context of social media use. As the frequency of social media use increases, consumers inevitably suffer from online social rejection in the process of using social media. This study helps consumers to understand the causes of ostentatious consumption in the social media context and to avoid the temptation and trap of consumption by actively facing social rejection and increasing the intensity of social media use to alleviate the threat they feel so that they can make consumption decisions more rationally and return to rational consumption.

Second, we provide guidance for coping with the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption in the context of social media use. From the results of this study, it is clear that cyber-ostracism in the context of social media use can have a significant positive impact on consumers’ conspicuous consumption. Individuals are subjected to online personal chat exclusion and online group chat exclusion in the process of social media use, and these cyber-ostracisms all reduce consumers’ sense of control, which leads to consumers’ conspicuous consumption. Therefore, in the marketing process, merchants can use consumer status information to understand whether consumers are in the social situation of cyber-ostracism, and the rejected consumers should give more attention and positive feedback to alleviate the negative emotions of consumers, reduce the probability of consumers choices such as showy consumption and other transient irrational consumption behavior, and promote consumers to establish a scientific and reasonable consumption concept, so as to better establish a sustainable and long-term brand relationship with consumers.

Finally, companies should pay attention to the collection of data on consumers’ own traits. In today’s era, when social networks are prevalent, consumers often experience cyber-ostracism in the process of using social media, and in the consumer context, the sense of threat brought by cyber-ostracism will prompt them to choose the corresponding products, and for entity theorists, the quick selection and use of some showy items will be able to satisfy their psychological sense of being noticed. In contrast, incremental theorists do not feel the same way. On the contrary, incremental theorists are less concerned about conspicuous consumption, as they are more concerned about the change and improvement of their own ability; it may be easier to attract the attention of incremental theorists if they can quickly and effectively realize the benefits of conspicuous consumption on the improvement of their ability. Therefore, companies can use advertising videos and the verbal behavior of promoters to activate consumers’ incremental tendencies and turn the negative effects of cyber-ostracism into positive effects that create self-improvement and change while at the same time, collecting data on consumers’ own traits can more effectively provide different products or services to different consumer segments.

5.4. Limitations and Future Research Directions

First, there are some geographical limitations to the sample of this study. This study only investigated social media users in China. Given the global implications and applicability of this study, we should test whether the current effects can generally be applied to consumption in other developed countries to see if culture influences the results of the study or if it were to determine whether developments in a country have changed consumer perceptions of these issues.

Second, although this study explored the potential mechanism of the interaction between cyber-ostracism and social media use intensity on conspicuous consumption in a social media context, this study used a cross-sectional research method, although it builds on a certain theoretical foundation, can reveal the causal relationship to a certain extent, but its revealing effect is much less than that of longitudinal studies. Future research should examine whether the conspicuous consumption behavior of people with low social media use intensity increases when cyber-ostracism changes. Furthermore, the current study selected a relatively young, nationally representative sample; therefore, this finding may not be comprehensive enough. The current findings were conducted in the general population as much as possible, and future research is expected to select a larger sample for a more comprehensive scientific study.

Finally, this study only examined the relationship between cyber-ostracism and conspicuous consumption while ignoring the social exclusion individuals suffer in real life. Future research should consider both cyber-ostracism and social exclusion and explore their interaction with conspicuous consumption.