• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.29-38
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• 2020

Purpose: Understanding which product types of overseas travel (free independent travel vs. package travel) consumers will choose is one of the key issues of marketing and consumer behavior in travel agency management. Prior studies on overseas travel type preferences mainly focused on comparing regional differences (e.g., Asian vs. Westerner, or Korean vs. Australian, or Korean vs. Japanese, or American, French, Italian vs. Japanese) influencing the choice of overseas travel type. Another researchers focused on comparing cultural differences (e.g., individualism vs. collectivism, or individualistic culture vs. collectivistic culture), subcultural difference (e.g., acculturation; Koreans living in Republic of Korea vs. Koreans living in Australia), travel lifestyle, and socio-demographics (e.g., age, gender, income level, education level, marital status, occupation etc.). However, there are few studies that identify individual psychological differences (i.e., individual psychological differences within the same culture) influencing the choice of overseas travel type. Self-construal is a psychological factors that greatly influences choice behavior. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of self-construal as an antecedent variable influencing choice of overseas travel product type. Research design, data and methodology: To achieve the purpose of this study, the questionnaire survey method was used. Self-construal items composed of independent self-construal items and interdependent self-construal items. Product types of overseas travel were free independent travel (FIT) type versus package travel type. In this study, the correlation coefficient between independent self-construal and interdependent self-construal was nonsignificant. It meant that the relationship between independent self-construal and interdependent self-construal was orthogonal. Therefore it was analyzed that independent self-construal and interdependent self-construal separately. Reliability analysis, factor analysis, and logistic regression analysis (controlling gender and age) was used as the data analysis method. Results: According to the results of this study, the stronger independent self-construal, the more preference for the free independent travel type rather than package travel, and the stronger interdependent self-construal, the more preference for the package travel type rather than free independent travel. Conclusions: Self-construal is an antecedent variable influencing the choice of travel type. Travel agencies must consider the consumer's self-construal (independent self-construal vs. interdependent self-construal) before planning and designing overseas travel products.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.15-28
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• 2014

The present study examined the effects of self-construal and message orientation on value advocacy advertising. An experiment of college students was conducted to investigate relationship between the attitude toward advocacy advertisements and the purchase intention. The results showed that people with interdependent self-construal have more positive attitude toward the advocacy advertisements than people with independent self-construal. The interaction effects between self-construal and message orientation on the value advocacy advertisements were not found significant. However, it was found that even people with independent self-construal showed more positive attitude toward the advocacy advertisement with others-orientation messages than the advertisement with self-orientation messages in value advocacy advertising. Based on the findings, theoretical and managerial implications for value advocacy advertising were discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.528-539
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• 2014

This study analyzed the influence of self-construal on sociocultural attitude toward physical appearance, body satisfaction, and appearance management behavior through a structural equation model. The empirical study was based on the response of 369 adult females between the ages of 20 and 49 in Seoul. Self-construal was presented as an independent self-construal and interdependent self-construal, respectively. The sociocultural attitude toward physical appearance as an intermediate variable in the research model was composed of two sub-factors that included internalization and awareness. The other (body satisfaction) was measured by two factors (body and face). Appearance management behavior (as a final outcome variable) were composed of various factors that included clothing concern, skin care, hair care, and weight training. The findings of this study were: 1) the effect of independent self-construal on the sociocultural attitude toward physical appearance was not significantly meaningful; however, interdependent self-construal influenced it positively. 2) Sociocultural attitude toward physical appearance appeared to have a negative effect on body satisfaction. 3) The body satisfaction also had a negative effect on appearance management behavior in this study.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.255-266
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• 2014

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the difference in the self-construal and the reason for prosocial behavior by cultural disposition. Further, this paper also aims to analyze the relationships among adolescents' cultural disposition, self-construal, and prosocial behavior and to analyze the path to moral reasoning. Data were collected from self-report questionnaires filled out by 385 adolescents in Cheongju. These data were analyzed by factor analysis, Cronbach's ${\alpha}$, Pearson's correlation, simple regression analysis, and multiple regression analysis using SPSS ver. 12.0. The major results of the study were as follows: first, adolescents who perceived higher individualism showed a higher independent self-construal, and adolescents who perceived higher collectivism showed a higher interdependent self-construal. Second, adolescents who perceived higher collectivism attributed prosocial behavior to internal reasons and adolescents who perceived both higher individualism and collectivism attributed prosocial behavior to self-focused reasons as compared to the adolescents who perceived them to be lower. Third, as a result of the mediator analysis, the cultural disposition of adolescents including individualism and collectivism influenced the internal reasons for prosocial behavior through independent selfconstrual. Further, the cultural disposition of adolescents influenced internal reasons, self-focused reasons, and other focused reasons for prosocial behavior through interdependent self-construal. Based on these results, the implication was discussed and a follow-up study was suggested.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.239-268
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• 2004

This study examined the role of self-construals in marital satisfaction among men and women, and explored how independent and interdependent self-construals contribute to or undermine marital satisfaction. Data were drawn from a self-administered questionnaire study in which 489 married people(aged 25-75) residing in Seoul participated. Path analyses were conducted using Structural Equation Modeling Program, and a goodness of fit of the proposed path model was evaluated. As expected, the positive impact of independent self-construal on marital satisfaction was mediated by self-esteem and clarity of communication, and that of interdependent self-construal on marital satisfaction was mediated by psychological stability and a sense of relational well-being. The direct effects of these two types of self-construal on marital satisfaction were opposite. As predicted, independent self-construal decreased marital satisfaction, whereas interdependent self-construal increased it. All of the direct and indirect effects of independent and interdependent self-construals on marital satisfaction were statistically significant, except the indirect effect of interdependent self-construal as mediated by psychological stability. The goodness of fit indexes of the path model indicated that the model was acceptable. However, the results of separate path analyses for men and women showed that some of the effects of self-construals on marital satisfaction differed by gender. Based on these results, implications for clinical social work practice were discussed.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.31-39
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• 2017

Purpose - This research aims to examine the influence of social capital formed on SNS on SNS users' life satisfaction. This research divides social capital into bridging and bonding social capital based on Social Capital Theory and suggests that each type of social capital will have a positive impact on SNS users' life satisfaction. In addition, this research suggests the self-construal of SNS users as a moderating variable based on Self-Construal Theory. Research design, data, and methodology - To test the hypotheses presented, an online survey was conducted with adult participants. An online research company was hired to conduct an online survey; survey participants were volunteer adult participants residing in Korea. And data was analyzed using SPSS. Results - Analysis results showed that the impact of bonding social capital on life satisfaction was not statistically different between SNS users of differing self-construals(independent vs. interdependent self-construal). However, this study also determined that the impact of bridging social capital on life satisfaction was greater for SNS users with an interdependent self-construal as opposed to those with an independent self-construal. Conclusions - The results of this study expand the scope of available research on social capital formed on SNS and provide practical implications for SNS providers.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.323-338
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• 2013

There are multiple process mechanism in causal reasoning, which is estimation of the causal strength between cause and result. Further, because these mechanisms operate on different time phase during causal reasoning, it is highly possible that different individual difference factors are related to individual mechanisms of causal reasoning. Especially, the phenomena of conditionalization and discounting reflect attention to multiple potential causes when people infer the relationship between cause and effect. In this study, we manipulated self-construal which is an individual difference factor that reflects context sensitivity in cognition. As results, no difference was observed in conditionalization between individuals with an independent self-construal and those with an interdependent self-construal. However, independent self-construal group was observed to be lower in discounting than the interdependent self-construal group. The results indicate that conditionalization and discounting are independent cognitive process in human causal reasoning.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.101-118
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• 2019

Alexithymia refers to a psychological deficit of identifying and describing one's feelings. It has benn reported that the level of alexithymia of East-Asians is generally higher than that of Western Europeans. Recently one research conducted in U.S. suggested that the interdependent self-construal from East-Asians' collectivism culture might be a cause of this cross-cultural difference. In the current study, we examined the relationship between the level of independent and interdependent self-construal of Korean college students and their level of alexithymia, as well as their ambivalence over emotional expressiveness and emotion suppression. The correlation analysis shows that the Korean students' alexithymia level does not correlate with their level of interdependent self-construal, but negatively correlates with their level of independent self-construal. Moreover, it is also correlated with the level of ambivalence over emotional expressiveness(AEE) and emotion suppression(ES). Thus, we setup a double-mediation model between the deficiency of independent self-construal and alexithymia via AEE and ES, and estimate mediation effects using Hayes and Preacher(2014)s' Process analysis. The results show that the deficiency of independent self-construal has a direct effect as well as indirect effects of AEE and ES on the alexithymia level. Further analysis on the indirect effects reveals that the mediation effect of AEE and the double mediation effect of ES via AEE are significant, but the mediation effect of ES is not significant. Current results imply that the interdependent self-construal from the traditional collectivistic culture may not cause Korean college students' problems on the emotional expression, but the relatively lower independent self-construal may cause them. The deficiency of independent self-constural may raise up the level of self-defensive ambivalence over emotional expressiveness and suppress emotional expression by themselves, which can result in alexithymia.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.261-273
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to find out how the online brand community characteristics affect customer behavior according to self-construal level and gender difference. The characteristics of online community are divided into interaction, objectivity, information provision, and activity reward. First, interactivity and activity compensation among the characteristics of online community have a positive effect on brand community commitment. On the other hand, the effect of purpose and information provision is insufficient. Second, the greater the commitment to the brand community, the higher the WOM effect is. Finally, this study shows that customers with dependent self-construal tendencies have more brand community support than customers with independent self-construal tendencies, and females show more brand community support than males. This study suggests an efficient marketing approach to companies through a brand community commitment by understanding the intrinsic motivation of consumers' self-construal level.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.678-686
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• 2021

A smiling face usually has a positive effect on interpersonal relationships by delivering a warm impression. However, the stereotype content model and compensation effect between warmth and competence suggested that warmth perceptions caused by a smiling face could influence competence perceptions negatively. This study examined the negative impact of the advertising endorser's smile on purchase intention in an expensive product category by adopting the self-construal level. The study results showed that consumers with independent-self construal (vs. interdependent self-construal) showed a lower purchase intention when exposed to an ad containing an endorser's smile. In comparison, consumers with interdependent-self construal (vs. independent self-construal) showed a lower purchase intention when exposed to an ad without an endorser's smile. Thus, this study demonstrated a moderating role of self-construal in the relationship between advertising endorser's smile and purchase intention. These findings provide valuable theoretical and practical implications for effective advertising strategies in the expensive product category.