The Origin of Close-Mindedness : How Conspiracism and Communication Prompt Dogmatism in Consumer Issues

Consumers' propensity to subscribe to conspiracy theories about corporate issues has been barely studied. For this reason, the study tested relationships between three predictors (conspiratorial mindset, Internet vocalizing tendency, and issue activeness) of consumers and their close-mindedness. The study used two South Korea online panel survey datasets (N=700, Study 1 and N=720, Study 2) about different topics (three Korean mobile telecommunication market issues and two food industry issues). The findings suggest that all three predictors mostly showed a significantly positive relationship with consumers' two types of close-mindedness. In addition, when it comes to issues related to ethics (pricing and antitrust issues in Korean mobile telecommunication corporations and GMO issues in the food industry), people with a higher conspiracy mindset have much higher levels of solution close-mindedness when they use the Internet more in a vocalizing way