Zero-COVID and retail: using multi-wave data to examine the role of perceived risk and psychological factors in shopping abandonment

This study addresses gaps by developing and validating an underlying framework using the paradigm of construal-level theory in zero-COVID policy. We examined the perceived risk of COVID-19 effects on consumers' psychological distance—social, spatial, temporal, and hypothetical—contributing to their psychological distress. Additionally, we examined the impact of consumers' psychological distress on their online shopping cart abandonment (OSCA). We applied the boundary condition of self-construal concerning psychological distance and distress. We targeted Chinese online shoppers as the research population and collected data from 483 respondents in three waves. This is the initial step of a zero-COVID policy, and the findings established that the perceived risk of COVID-19 substantially impacts psychological distance—social, spatial, temporal, and hypothetical-subsequently triggering distress and leading to online shopping cart abandonment. Results confirmed that self-construal moderates the relations of psychological distance—social, temporal, spatial, and hypothetical—on consumers' distress. We offer implications for online sellers and literature on psychology, information processing, and risk. We acknowledge limitations and provide directions for future research.