The Psychological Mechanism of Consumers' Irrational Decision-Making from the Perspective of Behavioral Economics

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Authors: Yuqian Li
Cited by: 0

Abstract

In society today, people often think that consumers are usually rational, and they make decisions after thinking and comparing them when shopping. However, this is not the case. Most of the time, consumers often show irrational characteristics such as impulsive prejudice or crowd psychology when shopping. This paper will focus on the factors that affect consumers making irrational decisions, such as an in-depth exploration of the psychological mechanism of consumers' irrational decision-making or the impact of consumers in different consumption scenarios. This paper analyzes the classification of the main psychological mechanisms of consumers' irrational decision-making through examples, such as the irrational mechanism driven by cognitive bias, the irrational mechanism driven by emotion and motivation, etc. The irrational decision-making psychological mechanism is brought about by different consumption scenarios, such as the impact of the irrational decision-making psychological mechanism on consumers in different scenarios such as online shopping. Not only that, but it also puts forward strategies that can help consumers make rational decisions according to the situation. The core research significance of this paper is to analyze the psychological mechanism of irrational decision-making of consumers to remind consumers how to make more rational consumption decisions, help consumers protect their rights and interests, and understand how to consume rationally.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics Consumer Behavior and Marketing Influence Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing

Publication details

Journal / source
Journal of innovation and development
Volume
14
Issue
2
Pages
502–507
Publication date
9 February 2026
Language
EN