An Empirical Study on the Determinants of Anxiety in Gift-Giving Behavior: An Expansion of Wooten's Model

Why so many givers become anxious in gift giving? Wooten (2000) provided an answer to the question by proposing a model of gifting anxiety. However, his model is lack of quantitative analysis to support its empirical adequacy. This study aims to expand Wooten's model with additional nine determinants of gifting anxiety and verify the expanded model by conducting quantitative analysis based on consumer surveys. The results show that givers' gifting anxiety arises when highly motivated to impress the recipient but doubt of success, which supports Wooten's hypotheses. The verified expanded model suggests that all additional determinants have significant effects on gifting anxiety.