Passion has been defined as a strong inclination for individuals to take part in a particular activity (Vallerand et al., 2003). In other words, individuals with passion devote significantly more time and energy to a particular activity than those without passion. When individuals are passionate about online shopping activities, they are likely to spend significant time and energy shopping online.

Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur (1995) indicated that media dependency might occur when a medium satisfies individuals’ needs or allows them to achieve their goals. Dependency may occur when individuals use a particular medium habitually (Rubin & Windahl, 1986). Further, the intensity of dependency may grow, since the medium satisfies individuals’ goals (Ball-Rokeach, 1985; Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1995). Therefore, in the present study it is suggested that online shopping dependency might occur while individuals continue to shop online. According to the discussion above, the following hypothesis was developed.
H1: Individuals with passion are dependent on online shopping activities.

The two types of passion, harmonious and obsessive, that Vallerand et al. (2003) identified can be differentiated by how well individuals integrate the passionate activities in their daily lives. Individuals with harmonious passion will integrate the passionate activities, meaning that they can stop and move to another activity voluntarily. However, individuals with obsessive passion will be controlled by the passionate activity.

Individuals with obsessive passion will be more dependent on online shopping activities than those with harmonious passion (Wang & Yang, 2007). As has been found in previous studies, individuals with obsessive passion often engage in behaviors associated with negative effects, such as problematic gambling (Mageau, Vallerand, Rousseau, Ratelle, & Provencher, 2005; Ratelle, Vallerand, Mageau, Rousseau, & Provencher, 2004) and online game addiction (Wang & Chu, 2007).

As d’Astous (1990) indicated, heavy consumers have the desire to go shopping repeatedly. However, shopping will become a compulsive behavior if this behavior becomes continuous. Individuals with compulsive buying behavior will be obsessively passionate about online shopping activities. This leads to the second and third hypotheses of this study:
H2: Individuals with compulsive buying behavior are more passionate about online shopping.
H3: Individuals with compulsive buying behaviors are more dependent on shopping online.

Pervin, Cervone, and John (2004) define personality traits as stable charac- teristics that explain the consistency among how humans feel, what they think, and how they present themselves. According to the processes of individual development, personality precedes many other behaviors. Personality traits have been proven to be related to many activities, including internet usage (Hamburger & Ben-Artzi, 2000; Landers & Lounsbury, 2006) and compulsive buying behavior (Kwak, Zinkhan, & Roushanzamir, 2004).

Pervin et al. (2004) found that individuals with higher neuroticism tend to be more nervous and worry more than others. In addition, individuals with higher extraversion levels are more driven to seek stimulation and enjoyment. Extraverts are generally more optimistic and more passionate than others. Furthermore, individuals with greater openness are full of curiosity, innovativeness, and imagination. They take a great interest in new things. Individuals with higher scores of agreeableness tend to trust rather than be suspicious of other people. In other words, individuals with a lower degree of agreeableness doubt things that they do not personally know. Individuals with a higher degree of conscientiousness are more organized and cautious. Conscientious people are more persistent, and do not give up easily. Kwak, Zinkhan, and Roushanzamir (2004) proposed that consumers who show persistence in shopping activities tend to engage in compulsive buying. Furthermore, Goldsmith (2002) suggested that individuals with high degrees of innovativeness and who are adventuresome would shop online more than others. Therefore, in the present study it was proposed that personality traits might be predictors of harmonious passion, obsessive passion, compulsive buying, and online shopping dependency. The fourth hypothesis addresses this:
H4: Personality traits are predictors of passion, compulsive buying, and online shopping dependency.

These four hypotheses are summarized as the research concept in Figure 1.

A paper-and-pencil questionnaire was administered on a Taiwanese university campus. A convenience random sampling procedure was used, and the questionnaire was made available in the main entrance of several major classroom buildings. Each participant was asked to complete the questionnaire in exchange for a small gift worth about US$3. Potential participants were informed that they had the right to decline.

The concepts of harmonious passion and obsessive passion were used in this study to divide participants into three groups: low passion, harmonious passion, and obsessive passion groups. Since there were seven items for both harmonious passion and obsessive passion using a 5-point Likert scale, the score of 21 was used as the critical point for defining high and low passion. Participants with a score of 21 or higher on harmonious passion/obsessive passion were defined as high harmonious passion/obsessive passion participants. No participant with low harmonious passion but high obsessive passion was identified in this study. Therefore, in this study participants with low harmonious passion and low obsessive passion were defined as low passion group members. Participants with high harmonious passion and low obsessive passion were defined as harmonious passion group members (HP group). Participants with high harmonious passion and high obsessive passion were defined as obsessive passion group members (OP group).

There were statistically significant differences between the HP and OP groups with regard to online shopping behavior and experience. As shown in Table 1, individuals in the OP group spent, on average, 1.42 hours a day, over 3.10 days a week shopping online, significantly more than those in both HP and low passion groups. In addition, obsessively passionate individuals had an average of 12.95 years online shopping experience, significantly more than that of both HP and low passion group members.

Table 3 shows the relationship among harmonious passion, obsessive passion, compulsive buying, and dependency. According to these correlation coefficients, both harmonious passion and obsessive passion are significantly related to online shopping dependency. These results supported the first hypothesis that individuals with passion are dependent on online shopping activities. In addition, both harmonious and obsessive passion are positively related to compulsive buying, which supports hypothesis two. Further, compulsive buying was significantly related to online shopping dependency. This supported the third hypothesis that individuals with a compulsive buying behavior would be more dependent on online shopping.

In the study the difference in online shopping dependency was examined by comparing the group who bought compulsively and those who were not compulsive buyers (see Table 4). There was a significant difference between these two groups in terms of the level of dependency on online shopping activities. This result suggested that compulsive buyers were more dependent on online shopping activities than those who were not compulsive buyers, which supported the fourth hypothesis. In addition, the compulsive buying group had a mean score of 3.16 which exceeded 3, the middle point of the 5-point scale. It could be said that only the compulsive buying group is dependent on online shopping.

There were statistically significant differences in some personality traits among the low passion, HP, and OP groups. As shown in Table 5, individuals with passion had higher agreeableness and conscientiousness than those without passion. However, no significant differences exist in levels of extraversion, neuroticism, and openness the low passion, HP, and OP groups.

An analysis was carried out of the differences in personality traits between the compulsive and not compulsive buying groups, as shown in Table 6. Individuals without compulsive buying behavior showed greater conscientiousness than compulsive consumers.

However, there was no significant difference among personality traits in terms of online shopping dependency, as shown in Table 7.

According to the empirical survey results of this study, individuals in both the harmonious passion and obsessive passion groups went shopping online more often and were more online-shopping-dependent than those in the low passion group. Furthermore, individuals with obsessive passion were more online- shopping-dependent than those with harmonious passion, which supported the arguments of Vallerand et al. (2003) that individuals with an obsessive passion for a particular activity are unable to stop participating in the activity. This obsessive passion may lead to persistent behavior. Dependency is one kind of persistent behavior that can develop in response to online shopping activities.

According to the results of this study, passion was correlated with compulsive buying behavior. Individuals with a passion for online shopping may also manifest compulsive buying behavior in traditional shopping in bricks-and-mortar stores. The internet provides a more convenient and quicker channel for consumers with a compulsive buying behavior to purchase from. In this study it was also found that conscientiousness was negatively related with compulsive buying behavior in both the low passion and harmonious passion groups. Individuals with higher conscientiousness give up in hardly any situations. These individuals are more persistent and more tenacious than others. The findings supported the conclusion by Kwak et al. (2004) that consumers with persistence in shopping were likely to engage in compulsive buying behaviors. However, this study did not find any significant correlation between conscientiousness and compulsive buying behavior in the obsessive passion group. This may be because the sample size of the obsessive passion group in the current study was too small to analyze. Studies in the future should use larger samples of individuals with an obsessive passion to retest the relationship between conscientiousness and compulsive buying behavior.

Based on the results of this study, personality traits may be used as predictive variables for passion, dependency, and compulsive buying. Individuals without passion had lower scores of agreeableness than those with passion. A possible reason is that individuals with lower agreeableness are more critical and suspicious than others. These people may worry about the quality of the products they buy and thus would prefer to shop in a bricks-and-mortar store rather than online.

Individuals with passion had higher scores of openness than those without passion. That may be because individuals with higher openness are more creative, and more curious, than others. They may voluntarily seek out innovative products. This finding supported Goldsmith’s (2002) suggestion that individuals who were more innovative and adventuresome would shop online more than others. The diversity of the internet offers a good opportunity to look for new products.

In this study it was also found that compulsive consumers are less conscientious than other consumers. That may be because individuals with higher conscientiousness are more organized and self-controlled and may be less responsive to temptations. However, in the study no relationship was found among personality traits and online shopping dependency. One possible reason is that there are so many factors influencing online shopping dependency that the phenomenon cannot be explained only by personality traits.

The focus in future studies may be on the different impacts of harmonious and obsessive passion on compulsive buying behavior as well as online shopping activities. As Table 3 indicated, the relationship coefficient between harmonious passion and compulsive buying behavior is significantly lower than that between obsessive passion and compulsive buying behavior. The positive relationship between harmonious passion and compulsive buying behavior may be an indirect effect which comes from the relationship between harmonious and obsessive passion. According to Table 3, harmonious and obsessive passion are highly correlated. The relationship coefficient is 0.52 between harmonious and obsessive passion and 0.34 between obsessive passion and compulsive buying. The indirect effect from harmonious passion via obsessive passion to compulsive behavior is 0.52*0.34 or 0.18, which is greater than 0.14, the relationship coefficient between harmonious passion and compulsive buying behavior. Thus, the positive relationship between harmonious passion and compulsive buying behavior may come from an indirect effect of obsessive passion rather than harmonious passion itself. In future studies, structural equation modeling (SEM) may be used to discuss the relationship among obsessive passion, harmonious passion, and compulsive buying behavior.

There are some limitations to this empirical study. First, because of the small number of obsessive passion group members, this study did not find any statistically significant differences among personality traits with regard to compulsive buying behavior and online shopping dependency. A larger sample of obsessive passion individuals is suggested in any future study. Secondly, all participants in this study were students. They may participate in online shopping activities more, but have less income than older, nonstudent consumers. This may be the reason that obsessive passion members were too few to analyze alone in this study. Further research is needed to collect data from a wider variety of subjects/consumers in order to resolve this issue.

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