TY - JOUR
T1 - The Psychology of Psychic Distance
T2 - Antecedents of Asymmetric Perceptions
AU - Håkanson, Lars
AU - Ambos, Björn
AU - Schuster, Anja
AU - Leicht-Deobald, Ulrich
PY - 2016/2
Y1 - 2016/2
N2 - Already on its introduction into the international business literature, the concept of ‘psychic distance’ implied asymmetry in the distance perceptions between country pairs, a characteristic corroborated in subsequent empirical studies. However, predominant empirical operationalizations and their theoretical underpinnings assume psychic distances to be symmetric. Building on insights from psychology and sociology, this paper demonstrates how national factors and cognitive processes interact in the formation of asymmetric distance perceptions. The results suggest that exposure to other countries through emigrants and imports of cultural goods and services have asymmetric effects on psychic distance perceptions. The size of these effects appears to vary with the size of the home country – smaller countries tend, on average, to perceive psychic distances to the rest of the world as smaller than do bigger ones. The reputational status of target countries relative to that of the home country is found to have a non-linear, asymmetric effect on distance perceptions.
AB - Already on its introduction into the international business literature, the concept of ‘psychic distance’ implied asymmetry in the distance perceptions between country pairs, a characteristic corroborated in subsequent empirical studies. However, predominant empirical operationalizations and their theoretical underpinnings assume psychic distances to be symmetric. Building on insights from psychology and sociology, this paper demonstrates how national factors and cognitive processes interact in the formation of asymmetric distance perceptions. The results suggest that exposure to other countries through emigrants and imports of cultural goods and services have asymmetric effects on psychic distance perceptions. The size of these effects appears to vary with the size of the home country – smaller countries tend, on average, to perceive psychic distances to the rest of the world as smaller than do bigger ones. The reputational status of target countries relative to that of the home country is found to have a non-linear, asymmetric effect on distance perceptions.
KW - Psychic distance
KW - Cultural distance
KW - Asymmetry
KW - Distance cognition
KW - Psychic distance
KW - Cultural distance
KW - Asymmetry
KW - Distance cognition
UR - http://sfx-45cbs.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/45cbs?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&url_ctx_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info:sid/sfxit.com:azlist&sfx.ignore_date_threshold=1&rft.object_id=954921426642
U2 - 10.1016/j.jwb.2015.11.005
DO - 10.1016/j.jwb.2015.11.005
M3 - Journal article
VL - 51
SP - 308
EP - 318
JO - Journal of World Business
JF - Journal of World Business
SN - 1090-9516
IS - 2
ER -