would lead to a stronger anticipation of regret, but more frequent house buying would not.
A home buyer’s age was found not only to influence experienced regret positively, but also
influenced dissatisfaction negatively. Furthermore, pre-sale transactions caused more
upward CFT for home buyers than completed ones.
All the hypotheses were supported except H2, which predicts that perception of
irreversibility in home purchase has a positive effect on perceived risk. Such an effect
(b ¼ 0.08) was found in this study, but it did not reach the significant level ( p .0.05).
This might be due to the limited sample size. Moreover, the effect of irreversibility on
perceived risk might be moderated by home buyers’ characteristics which were not
included in this study. Personality variables, such as risk tolerance and risk propensity
(Sitkin & Pablo, 1992), can lead to different perceptions of risk for individuals in similar
situations. The effect of irreversibility on perceived risk might depend on purchasers’
characteristics. Furthermore, Chinese consumers are more accustomed to irreversible
purchase decisions than Western buyers because consumer protection and refund policies
are immature, or non-existent, on the Chinese mainland. Thus, they might be less likely to
relate irreversibility to perceived risk conceptually in the study. Hence, the effect of
irreversibility on perceived risk might be insignificant among Chinese home buyers.