QR Codes - Psychology and Behaviour

Psychology and Behaviour
Perhaps one key to understanding consumer behaviour and QR codes lies in psychology and behaviour. By looking at how people act and react to QR codes, industry could better create campaigns that are more precisely tailored to customer preferences (Shin, Jung & Chang, 2012).
Shin, Jung & Chang in their study ‘The Psychology of QR Codes’ determined that users are more likely to be influenced by interactivity in their decision to accept QR codes. The components of interactivity are (1) responsiveness, (2) user control and (3) connectedness. They determined that QR codes with more positive perceived interactivity values have a greater influence on quality, which results in a greater influence on usefulness and ease of use, leading to intention and actual usage behaviour of QR codes.

They suggest that QR codes are not only perceived as a commerce channel, but also as a social venue through which users can interact with other users. This means that QR code activity entails more than seeking information; it is perceived to be a social activity comprising entertainment, education and socialisation.
The study also concluded that subjective norms (an individual’s perception of whether important people think the behaviour should be performed) plays a role in behaviour. They found that enhanced feelings of social influence will result in improved perception of usefulness and ease of use through service use and content.
They suggest that future codes be designed to exploit the high relevance and great importance of word-of-mouth as a means of inducing user participation.

Recent Independent Research by Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB) also looked at consumer behaviour which discovered that most respondents (46%) scanned a QR Code out of Curiosity (CMB, 2011).
One recent theoretical treatment of curiosity is the "knowledge gap". A knowledge gap can be defined as the difference between two quantities: what a person knows and what he or she would like to know. Curiosity arises when people become aware of the existence of a knowledge gap in a particular domain or when they encounter novel or inconsistent stimuli (Berlyne 1954, 1960), stimulus ambiguity or incongruity (Hehb 1949), or stimuli that violate their expectations (Hunt 1963). These situations highlight their knowledge deficiencies (Loewenstein 1994). Awareness of a knowledge gap produces an aversive feeling of deprivation or discomfort that can be alleviated only by obtaining the information needed to close the gap, which consequently produces an intense desire to modify the existing knowledge structure (Berlyne 1960) (Menon and Soman 2002). In short, the curiosity arousal means that people inherently want to know more about QR Codes and feel deprived if they are not part of or belong to its arrival.