Conformity with Compulsive Buying in Adolescents

Compulsive buying is a shopping behavior that is repeated and has a strong urge to shop which is done as a diversion from negative feelings, such as stress and anxiety. Compulsive buying can be influenced by the social environment, where a person will behave following the expectations of others, the presence of pressure, or what is often called conformity. This study aims to determine the relationship between conformity and compulsive buying in adolescents. The approach used is a quantitative approach with the type of correlational research. The measuring instrument in this study used the conformity scale and Edwards Compulsive Buying Scale (ECBS). Participants in this study were teenagers aged 1824 years totaling 399 teenagers living in the city of Kupang. The result of hypothesis testing using the Spearman correlation technique obtained a correlation coefficient value of 0.208 with a significance level of 0.000 (p<0.05), which means that there is a positive and significant relationship between conformity and compulsive buying in adolescents in Kupang City.


Introduction
Shopping is one of the routine things done to meet daily needs. When shopping, each individual carries out a decision-making process to buy a product based on needs and desires (Rahajeng, 2014). Shopping centers that are growing rapidly and provide various kinds of attractive product offers also make someone interested in doing shopping activities.
Lately, many individuals tend to buy something that is not needed or not only to fulfill their needs, but shopping has become a lifestyle. On the other hand, some individuals do this to divert from a bad mood, for example feeling bored and stressed with routine, so they decide to divert by doing things that make them feel happy, relieved, and satisfied (Wijayanti, 2017).
This behavior is called compulsive buying. Compulsive buying is a negative and abnormal buying behavior that makes individuals addicted to shopping and not to get the desired item, but satisfaction in the buying process itself (Hafez, Sahn & Farrag, 2013). Compulsive buying behavior is generally experienced by teenagers.
At this time, adolescents experience many changes, the transition from childhood to adulthood, and a period of searching for identity (Santrock, 2007).
One of the factors that influence compulsive buying is conformity.
Conformity occurs when individuals follow the attitudes or behavior of others because of their requests, because of the real or imagined requirements of others. A group can have a positive impact on adolescents, but it can also cause negative things, such as influencing consumption patterns at a young age (Pergiwati, 2016).
Teenagers tend to want to have an attractive appearance. This is done by teenagers by buying clothes and various accessories that can support their appearance. Teenagers tend to buy interesting items and items that are popular in their environment, even though they are expensive. Some of them buy an expensive product to maintain their status in front of their friends and feel satisfied after having the product they want (Sholihah & Astuti, 2014).
Research on conformity and compulsive buying also conducted by Howard (2016) found that a person feels it is important to buy a product that is approved by Vol.3, No.4, December 2021, pp. 504 -514 Fakultas Kesehatan Masyarakat Universitas Nusa Cendana 506 | others and tends to make compulsive buying, such as buying a product that will be a financial burden. There is also a study conducted by Wijayanti (2017), regarding the relationship between conformity and compulsive buying in Psychology students at the State Islamic University of Malang. The results show that there is a positive relationship between conformity and compulsive buying.

Journal of Health and Behavioral Science
Based on the results of a survey conducted by the author to 20 teenagers, it was found that most of them liked shopping activities. In addition to meeting needs, many things make teenagers like shopping, including liking and being interested in these products, shopping is fun, following friends and trends, and shopping will feel happy.

Method
This study uses a quantitative approach with the type of correlational research. The data analysis technique used Spearman analysis. Sampling in this study used a convenience sampling technique. The number of samples used was 399 teenagers, which were obtained through the Slovin formula with a standard error of 5% (Sugiyono, 2018). The inclusion criteria were adolescents aged 18-24 years living in Kupang City. The data collection process was carried out using a questionnaire with the help of Google Forms and distributed through social media. Vol.3, No.4, December 2021, pp. 504 -514 Fakultas Kesehatan Masyarakat Universitas Nusa Cendana 507 |

Journal of Health and Behavioral Science
The independent variable in this study is conformity. The measuring instrument uses a conformity adaptation scale compiled by Mehrabian (1995). This scale has been translated into Indonesian. This scale is a Likert scale and consists of 7 items and has 4 answer choices, namely, strongly disagree, disagree, agree, and strongly agree. The scale adaptation process is carried out in four stages, namely the stage of translating the measuring instrument into Indonesian by two professionals.
The second stage is to conduct discussions based on the agreed translation results.
The third stage is to review the translation results to ensure the equality of the measuring instrument. The fourth stage is to conduct a trial to see whether the measuring instrument is suitable for use or not.
The dependent variable in this study is compulsive buying. The measuring instrument uses the Edwards Compulsive Buying Scale (ECBS) compiled by Edwards (1993). The ECBS scale has been translated into Indonesian. This scale is a Likert scale and consists of 12 items and has 5 answer choices, namely, strongly disagree, disagree, agree, neutral, and strongly agree. Before being distributed the two scales were tested for validity on 25 adolescents so that the conformity and ECBS scales consisted of 12 items and 7 items. After that, the researcher conducted a reliability test, obtained the Cronbach's Alpha value on the conformity scale of 0.421 and ECBS of 0.866.

Results
Statistical processing data that explains the description of respondents based on gender and age can be seen in the  Tables 5 and 6 above show that of the 399 participants, the highest age is in the range of 20-21 years.  Table 7 shows the distribution of data on the conformity variable is not normal, this is because the significance level of the conformity variable is less than 5% (0.05), while the compulsive buying variable is normally distributed with a significance value of 0.025. The results of the correlation test above show that the correlation between the variables of conformity and compulsive buying is 0.208**, which means it has a weak relationship. Based on the results above, it can be seen that the correlation of the two variables is significant because the significance value obtained is 0.000 <0.05.

Discussion
This study aims to determine the relationship between conformity, and compulsive buying in adolescents in the city of Kupang. Based on the results of hypothesis testing using the Spearman correlation test, it shows that there is a significant relationship between conformity and compulsive buying. This can be seen from the correlation coefficient obtained by 0.208 with a significance value of 0.000 <0.05, which means that there is a significant relationship between conformity variables and compulsive buying.
Based on the results of research on the conformity variable, the researcher found that the variable was included in the medium category with a total of 336 people (84.22%). From this percentage, adolescents in the city of Kupang have a moderate level of conformity, where they change attitudes and behavior according to the opinions of others to be accepted in the environment. This is following Bandura's (1977) social learning theory which states that the surrounding environment will affect a person's behavior, which causes individual reactions and can provide a stimulus for individuals to do something based on what is seen and observed in the environment. Some will buy products that are approved by others and tend to make compulsive buyings even though it will be a financial burden (Sari, 2016). Furthermore, when viewed by age level, it was found that Kupang City teenagers in the age range of 20-21 years tended to show higher conformity behavior and compulsive buying. Gwin, et al. (2004) found that ages ranging from 18-21 years have a high tendency to make compulsive purchases. The characteristics of adolescents who are looking for self-identity often cause problems, including shopping behavior. There is even a tendency to compulsively buy. Unstable adolescent emotional maturity causes various symptoms of negative and unnatural buying behavior (Mangestuti, 2014). Based on the results of the study above, it shows that women have a higher tendency to make purchases than men. This is in line with research by Lee & Workman (2015), which found that women showed a higher tendency to make Shopping helps them to reduce anxiety, stress, boredom, low self-esteem, and even depression in their daily lives (Ergin, 2010).

Conclusion
Based on the research conducted, it can be concluded that there is a positive and significant relationship between compulsive buying and conformity in adolescents in Kupang City. The results of the Spearman correlation analysis obtained a correlation coefficient (r) of 0.208 and a significance value (p) = 0.000 <0.05. This means that the higher the level of conformity, the higher the compulsive buying in adolescents in the city of Kupang. Conversely, the lower the level of conformity, the lower the compulsive buying behavior in adolescents in Kupang City.

Suggestion
The suggestions proposed in this study are for adolescents and future researchers. For teenagers in Kupang, they are expected to be able to control themselves, control their emotions, pay more attention to the desire to shop excessively by prioritizing the scale of priorities rather than the mere desire to be accepted and liked by the group, be more selective in making friends, and be able to manage finances more effectively.
Future researchers are expected to find out more about the factors that influence compulsive buying and balance the number of research respondents between women and men.