AUTHOR=Kononova Anastasia , Huddleston Patricia , Moldagaliyeva Moldir , Lee Heijin , Alhabash Saleem 

TITLE=Influence of cultural values and hierarchical social norms on buying counterfeits online: a 17-country study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 15 - 2024

YEAR=2024

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1394660

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1394660

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=As a globally prevalent phenomenon, buying counterfeit products harms consumers, economies, societies, governments, and the environment. A cross-sectional survey (N = 13,053) of consumers from 17 nations, administered in seven languages, explored cross-country differences in perceived social norms about buying counterfeits. The study examined the hierarchy of injunctive normative influence (personal vs. societal) on counterfeit purchase intentions and trends in non-deceptive (known) counterfeit purchase behavior. The current research expands the hierarchical norms approach by examining how the cultural values of power distance and individualism-collectivism predict injunctive normative perceptions and counterfeit buying intention and behavior. The findings of multilevel moderated mediation analyses showed that personal injunctive norms (perceived acceptance of buying counterfeits by close friends) mediated the relationship between societal injunctive norms (perceived acceptance for buying counterfeits by peers in the same country) and the outcome variables. Selected paths of the mediation model were moderated by the two cultural dimensions. Theoretical implications are discussed within the context of cultural orientations' and social norms' roles in informing risky behavior, and practically, within the context of awarenessraising and behavior-change interventions.  counterfeit purchase behavior is mediated by personal injunctive norms (e.g., among close friends). Given that counterfeit buying is a global phenomenon that affects many countries, we investigate how this hierarchical norms relationship (Patrick et al., 2012) is moderated by country-level cultural values of power distance and individualism-collectivism (Hofstede, 1979; Hofstede and Bond, 1984,   1988;Hofstede et al., 2010). We considered the cultural attributes of power distance and individualism-collectivism to be directly relevant to social influences and counterfeit buying because the former deals with the importance of social relationships and the latter concerns perceptions of authority and status.