Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

feelings are positive in nature and terms as gratitude. In social psychology literature, gratitude has beendefined as the positive affective response to receive a benefit or a favor (Emmons and Crumpler, 2000).In sum, gratitude is a positive feeling, arises because of sense of thankfulness and appreciation, whereas,obligation is a negative, uncomfortable state which is determined by normative demand and can beperceived as highly aversive (Greenberg and Bartel, 1976). From the research perspective, many scholarsacknowledge that both the constructs can operate independently. There are empirical evidences thatgratitude can be a predictor of reciprocal actions (Emmons & Crumpler, 2000; Goei & Boster, 2005;Graham, 1988; McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, & Larson, 2001). In contrast to that, studies onobligation have provided inconsistent results regarding the role of obligation in the favour-compliancerelationships. Some studies have found that favour increases obligation, and obligation, in its turn,increases compliance (Greenberg & Frisch, 1972; Greenberg &Saxe, 1975). Other studies reported norelationship between obligation and compliance (Goei & Boster, 2005).It is argued from ―broaden and build theory of positive emotions‖ that both gratitude and obligation wouldresult in different action tendencies (Fedrickson, 1998). According to the theory, negative emotions suchas fear, guilt and anger would result in quick and decisive actions. Since all these negative emotions occurin life threatening situations, which result in narrowing down the thought action repertoire and triggersquick and spontaneous actions. Contrary to that, positive emotions never occur in life threateningsituations. Positive emotions have complementary effect on thought-action repertoire. It broadens thethought-action repertoire and people usually delay their actions. In case of joy, happiness etc., peoplebroaden their action with respect to time dimension and usually respond with delayed actions as against incase of negative emotions. Extant literature on psychology and sociology has categorized as gratitude aspositive feeling and obligation as negative state. Therefore, it is argued that gratitude would result in longterm orientation of actions. On inception of gratitude, people would react in terms of building andsustaining long term relations with the benefactor. In contrast, obligation is unpleasant and undesirablefeeling. Therefore, to get rid of these feelings of indebtedness, people would react immediately. Thisimmediate action tendency would be as a result of narrowed nature of thought-action repertoire. Theimmediate reciprocity o inception of obligation would be a result of social norms and in long term peoplewould terminate the relationship with benefactor (Fedrickson, 1998).In sum, theory of reciprocity has considered norms of reciprocity as the basis of all reciprocal actions.Reciprocity theory is not able to explain the mechanism of reciprocal actions. Broad and build theory ofpositive feelings further provides foundation to consider consumer gratitude as the basis of long termrelationship. However broaden and build theory is not able to explain the role of negative feelings innurturing relationships. Considering both theoretical perspectives, present study is an attempt to develop aframework which explains the mediating role of consumer gratitude and consumer obligation in