Mortality salience and consumer risk taking striving for personal control and self-esteem /

by Atalay, Ayse Selin.

iii From a terror management perspective, this thesis argues that mortality salience (MS) causes consumers to become risk averse. Two mediators (the need for personal control and self-esteem striving) and a moderator (self-esteem relevance of the outcome of the risk) of this relationship are proposed. Three experiments show that MS leads to greater risk aversion, but allowing individuals to acquire control or to acquire self-esteem reduces the effect. A fourth study examines a boundary condition and looks at the effect of the self-esteem relevance of the risk on the risky choice. The research provides insights into how today’s consumers deal with existential anxiety in risky choice settings.