مصرف خانگی: تاثیر سطح مکش، مقایسه اجتماعی و مدیریت سرمایه

Abstract The present research posits and tests a model of household consumption of less necessary or luxury goods and services. It is hypothesized that a household's economic situation has a direct effect on this consumption as well as indirect effects mediated by aspiration level, social comparison and money management. Structural equation modeling of questionnaire data from a sample of households in a metropolitan area of Sweden (n=411) was used to test the model. The results reveal that as expected the household's economic situation has a significant direct effect on consumption and indirect effects through aspiration level and social comparison. The results also show that satisfaction with consumption increases with increased consumption and decreases with higher aspiration levels.

.1. Introduction Households are facing a number of consequential economic decisions concerning how to earn an income, what and how to purchase, what and how to save, and how to insure against possible losses. Many such decisions are made on a frequent and regular basis and are probably not perceived as particularly important or difficult to make. However, occasionally households struggle with tough decisions, for instance, about how to increase their income in bad times, buying or not buying a house, or how to cut down on expenses in order to increase savings for old age. Moreover, with the growing amount of products and services that are offered, and with the establishment of new ways of payment, daily managing the household economy has become an increasingly difficult task, a fact perhaps reflected in the growth of services for economic counseling (Bayne, 1998; Dellgran, 2000). The households' economic decisions are important and affect the well-being of the households themselves. They are also important for and affect the development of the national economy (Kirchler, 1995). Our focus in the present study is households' consumption of less necessary or luxury products and services. In a recent study, Dellgran and Karlsson (2001) analyzed Swedish household expenditure data from 1988 to 1996. The results indicated that the household economic situation in terms of income and household type (i.e., single or couple, with or without children) accounted for a substantial proportion of variance in the total household consumption (Full-size image (<1 K)). In addition, we distinguished between necessary and less necessary or luxury consumption. Based on a Swedish survey (Halleröd, Marklund, Nordlund, & Stattin, 1993) of what goods and services households perceive as necessary consumption, expenditures were categorized as necessary if at least 50% of the sample perceived it as such, otherwise as luxury consumption. Furthermore, in line with categorizations made by Statistics Sweden, goods and services that are purchased regularly and/or are paid for on a running basis were categorized as non-durables, otherwise as durables. In four separate analyses, income and type of household explained a larger proportion of the variance in expenditures on necessary non-durables (Full-size image (<1 K)) than of the variance in expenditures on necessary durables or luxury durables and non-durables (Full-size image (<1 K) or less). The aim of the present study is to shed light on the question of what determines less necessary or luxury consumption if not income and household type. Moreover, we want to study how satisfied households are with their level of consumption and what determines this satisfaction. In the following we derive a number of hypotheses about how aspiration level, social comparison, and money management influence consumption and satisfaction with consumption. How much a household consumes depends on the income or economic situation of households. According to the well-cited life-cycle hypothesis of saving and consumption (Modigliani & Brumberg, 1954), the level of consumption is determined by the average expected lifetime income and not the current income. Empirical data demonstrates, however, that consumption matches income to a much greater extent than suggested by the life-cycle hypothesis (Deaton, 1997). From this and in line with Shefrin and Thaler's (1988) behavioral life-cycle hypothesis, it is reasonable to assume that households' current income will be an important determinant of their consumption. However, consistent with the results of our previous study (Dellgran & Karlsson, 2001), for less necessary or luxury consumption the direct effect of income and economic situation is expected to be weak. As we argue below, there may still be several indirect effects of economic situation. Studies of subjective well-being and income have shown only weak positive correlations (Diener & Diener, 1996). In cross-national comparisons, countries with a greater gross domestic product per capita also have greater average self-reports of subjective well-being, but this correlation is at least in part explained by differences in social indicators such as human rights (Diener & Suh, 1999). Within the wealthier nations, however, there seems to be only a weak correlation between income and well-being. In line with this we do not expect the household economic situation to directly affect the households' satisfaction with their level of consumption. Research on subjective well-being and economic variables have dealt with the relation to income and wealth rather than to consumption. Even if income and wealth is not strongly related to subjective well-being in itself, we assume that the goods and services that households actually buy for their money affect their satisfaction with consumption, and the economic situation may therefore indirectly influence satisfaction through increased consumption. Hence, we expect that there is a positive effect of level of consumption on the satisfaction with the consumption. Furthermore, some of the factors we discuss below have both direct and indirect effects on satisfaction. 1.1. Aspiration level Aspiration level has been suggested to be important for understanding decision making. It refers to a subjectively established goal for achievement (Heath, Larrick, & Wu, 1998; Siegel, 1957; Starbuck, 1963). According to Simon (1959), people aim at finding a satisfactory alternative rather than an alternative that maximizes utility. According to Payne, Laughhunn, and Crum (1980), what is referred to as a reference point (i.e., whether an outcome is regarded as a gain or a loss) by Kahneman and Tversky (1979), or as target returns (i.e., whether an outcome reaches a target return or not) by Fishburn (1977), are special cases of aspiration level. Lopes (1987) extends the use of aspiration level in her two-factor theory for risky choice and treats it as a primarily situational factor. In the present study, aspiration level is regarded as a subjective goal that may be situationally or dispositionally determined. It refers to the degree to which households consider consumption of different goods and services to be necessary. Hence, the more households consider goods and services to be necessary, the higher their aspiration levels, and the more they will consume everything else being equal. Furthermore, someone who aspires much will be less satisfied with a given outcome than someone who aspires less. In several experiments this was demonstrated by Heath et al. (1998), for instance, in showing that people performing above a certain goal expect to feel positive emotions while people performing below a certain goal expect to feel negative emotions although their actual performance is equal. If households do not satisfy their greater aspiration levels by a greater level of consumption, we expect, in line with previous research (Heath et al., 1998; Wang, 1996), that they will be less satisfied. A greater aspiration level may thus be assumed to increase the consumption level, and increased consumption is associated with greater satisfaction. The aspiration level may be assumed to increase with a household's economic situation. It may also be assumed that a social comparison process affects the aspiration level. Households may see goods and services as necessary because other households are in possession of those goods and services (Wärneryd, 1988). Still, since we focus on comparisons of economic situations, it is unclear whether seeing one's own household as worse off than others will lead to a lower or higher aspiration level. On the one hand, having a high aspiration level may be a reason for considering the economic situation to be worse than for others if one cannot match those aspirations. On the other hand, having an economic situation that is considered to be worse than others may be a reason for having a lower aspiration level. Yet, we hypothesize that the aspiration level increases with a more positive evaluation of one's own household's economic situation in comparison with others. 1.2. Money management How people handle their money, pay bills, and make plans or budgets for how to use money is referred to as money management (Kirchler, 1988). Money management has received very limited research attention. In one of the few studies that actually investigated its role for consumption, Lea, Webley, and Walker (1995) found that debtors were poorer money managers than non-debtors, for instance, by being less likely to have a bank or building society account, by having shorter time horizons, and by rating themselves as poorer in money management. Money management was found to be an even better predictor of who is in debt than was an index of economic situation (or poverty index). However, as discussed by Lea et al., the causal relation of money management and debt is unclear since being in debt may make oneself more likely to feel as a poor money manager and may make it harder to open and possess bank accounts, which in turn may make it harder to be a good money manager. In the present study we investigate the role of money management for consumption. We assume that households engage in money management practices such as economic planning and regular saving with the aim of controlling consumption. Economic planning and regular saving may be assumed to favor future consumption rather than present consumption, and may therefore be expected to have a negative impact on the present consumption. However, since what is now present consumption has once been future consumption, although economic planning and regular saving is conducted in an attempt to regulate consumption, the impact on present consumption may actually be restricted. The household economic situation may have different effects on the degree to which people engage in economic planning and regular saving. Since the need for economic planning may be assumed to be greater for households with a worse economic situation, we hypothesize that the economic situation has a negative impact on the degree of economic planning. The means or possibilities for regular saving, however, may be assumed to be greater for those households that have a better economic situation, and it is therefore hypothesized that the economic situation has a positive impact on the degree of regular saving. The latter hypothesis is also in line with studies showing a positive correlation between regular saving and income (Furnham, 1985; Lunt & Livingstone, 1991). 1.3. Social comparison Social comparison has been recognized as an influential part of people's evaluations of their abilities and outcomes (Festinger, 1954; Suls & Wheeler, 2000). Although people typically report that they are better off than others (Taylor & Brown, 1988) and tend to compare themselves with similar others on related attributes (Miller & Prentice, 1996), they may also be motivated to do downward (i.e., comparing themselves with others who are worse off) as well as upward comparisons (i.e., comparing themselves with others who are better off). If people are motivated by self-enhancement, this is more easily satisfied by downward comparisons. For instance, a cancer patient may feel better by comparing himself or herself with other cancer patients who are worse off (Taylor & Lobel, 1989). However, someone who is motivated by self-improvement may more easily satisfy this by upward comparisons (Schwarz & Strack, 1999). Duesenberry (1949) assumed that social comparison is important for the understanding of changes in consumption and saving in response to income changes. It is suggested that consumption is determined by the relation of a household's current income to the income of households with whom the household compare themselves. In the present study we focus on social comparisons of households' economic situation, although social comparison processes may enter in other ways as well. The social comparison of the economic situation is related to the concept of “relative deprivation” (Runciman, 1966) and expresses how rich or poor a household consider themselves in comparisons with others. We assume that this will affect the households' consumption. More specifically, in line with previous demonstrations that the better one's own situation is perceived in comparison with others, the greater the reported satisfaction (Campbell, Converse, & Rodgers, 1976), we expect a positive correlation between perceived economic situation in comparison with others and satisfaction with the consumption. However, we hypothesize that this positive correlation is modified by the actual consumption, so that the better one's own economic situation is perceived to be in comparison with others, the greater the consumption, which in turn increases the satisfaction with consumption. 1.4. The hypothesized model Fig. 1 presents the posited model of determinants of less necessary or luxury consumption and satisfaction with consumption. The model summarizes the expected directional influences of household economic situation, aspiration level, social comparison, economic planning, and regular saving on consumption and satisfaction with consumption. Structural equation modeling (Bollen, 1989) is used to test the model. It is expected that the household economic situation has a positive and direct effect on consumption, so that with an increasingly good economic situation, the degree of consumption increases. Furthermore, the economic situation is expected to have a positive impact on the degree to which households consider their economic situation better than others, on their aspiration level, and on the degree of regular saving. The effect of the household economic situation on economic planning is, however, expected to be negative. Social comparison is expected to have a positive effect on consumption and satisfaction with consumption. The aspiration level is also expected to increase with a more favorable evaluation of one's own situation in comparisons with others. Aspiration level is expected to have a positive effect on consumption, but a negative effect on satisfaction (which reflects that for a given consumption level, those with a higher aspiration level will be less satisfied). Economic planning as well as regular saving is expected to have a negative impact on consumption (although as discussed above, this impact may be weak). Finally, consumption is expected to have a positive effect on satisfaction. That is, the more households consume, the more satisfied they are expected to be with their level of consumption.

.3. Results The results were obtained by using the software AMOS that applies maximum likelihood as the method of estimation based on the covariance matrix. The path coefficients in the structural equation model displayed in Fig. 1 and the measurement models were estimated simultaneously.1 A correlation matrix and other descriptives for the manifest variables included in the analysis are presented in Table 2. Missing values were replaced by using an expectation maximization (EM) method in which missing values in a manifest variable are estimated and replaced based on other manifest variables measuring the same latent variable. Table 2. Means, standard deviations (SDs), skewnesses, kurtosises, and product moment correlations (n=411) (squared multiple correlations are given in the diagonal) ECS1 ECS2 ECS3 ASP1 ASP2 ASP3 ASP4 SCP1 SCP2 SCP3 SCP4 SCP5 PLN1 PLN2 PLN3 PLN4 PLN5 RSV1 RSV2 RSV3 CONnd CONd SAT1 SAT2 SAT3 ECS1 0.53 ECS2 0.66 0.78 ECS3 0.49 0.46 0.49 ASP1 0.29 0.59 0.23 0.40 ASP2 0.12 0.07 0.02 0.12 0.37 ASP3 0.20 0.29 0.17 0.32 0.43 0.40 ASP4 0.09 0.18 −0.05 0.33 0.43 0.45 0.37 SCP1 0.38 0.44 0.39 0.26 0.12 0.18 0.10 0.58 SCP2 0.46 0.53 0.47 0.27 0.03 0.15 0.04 0.58 0.55 SCP3 0.32 0.39 0.36 0.24 0.12 0.15 0.13 0.77 0.46 0.43 SCP4 0.34 0.37 0.33 0.15 0.16 0.18 0.11 0.56 0.50 0.55 0.45 SCP5 0.49 0.56 0.53 0.29 0.09 0.17 0.05 0.60 0.58 0.52 0.56 0.66 PLN1 0.00 0.07 −0.08 0.09 −0.02 0.09 0.05 −0.10 −0.03 −0.13 −0.04 −0.07 0.55 PLN2 −0.06 −0.06 −0.02 −0.045 −0.12 −0.02 −0.04 −0.15 −0.02 −0.17 −0.14 −0.10 0.52 0.45 PLN3 −0.04 0.00 −0.08 0.07 −0.05 0.02 0.04 −0.12 −0.07 −0.11 −0.07 −0.09 0.54 0.47 0.53 PLN4 −0.09 −0.09 −0.12 −0.04 −0.09 0.01 −0.04 −0.22 −0.14 −0.20 −0.15 −0.17 0.43 0.47 0.50 0.44 PLN5 −0.15 −0.10 −0.27 −0.00 −0.05 −0.03 0.06 −0.24 −0.15 −0.23 −0.13 −0.20 0.54 0.42 0.49 0.46 0.48 RSV1 0.49 0.59 0.44 0.36 0.10 0.28 0.14 0.37 0.37 0.34 0.39 0.40 0.04 −0.06 −0.02 −0.13 −0.08 0.83 RSV2 0.36 0.43 0.53 0.28 0.06 0.26 0.09 0.31 0.34 0.33 0.30 0.35 −0.04 0.03 −0.02 −0.06 −0.14 0.59 0.48 RSV3 0.32 0.42 0.31 0.30 0.02 0.23 0.11 0.26 0.28 0.26 0.31 0.26 0.06 −0.02 −0.00 −0.07 0.05 0.75 0.61 0.66 CONnd 0.32 0.42 0.34 0.32 0.29 0.37 0.21 0.29 0.32 0.25 0.29 0.37 −0.04 −0.11 −0.12 −0.10 −0.13 0.32 0.24 0.20 0.42 CONd 0.28 0.42 0.30 0.34 0.02 0.24 0.15 0.36 0.35 0.30 0.26 0.34 0.05 −0.01 −0.02 0.00 −0.06 0.34 0.30 0.29 0.36 0.30 SAT1 0.31 0.36 0.40 0.20 −0.04 0.16 −0.01 0.46 0.39 0.37 0.33 0.48 −0.03 −0.02 −0.08 −0.13 −0.19 0.37 0.36 0.30 0.34 0.31 0.77 SAT2 0.34 0.34 0.43 0.19 −0.03 0.17 −0.04 0.47 0.38 0.38 0.35 0.47 −0.02 −0.01 −0.08 −0.10 −0.16 0.38 0.34 0.29 0.34 0.26 0.81 0.87 SAT3 0.30 0.31 0.43 0.15 −0.06 0.14 −0.06 0.44 0.37 0.35 0.32 0.44 −0.01 0.00 −0.07 −0.11 −0.15 0.35 0.32 0.26 0.31 0.29 0.81 0.86 0.85 Mean 9583.8 2.89 3.26 4.14 2.93 4.23 3.30 3.00 2.74 2.90 3.01 3.07 3.12 2.99 4.19 3.28 3.72 3.69 4.39 5.14 3.44 3.66 4.88 4.63 4.69 SD 4101.6 1.60 1.68 1.81 1.47 1.35 1.33 1.02 1.09 0.93 0.87 1.06 2.13 2.25 2.04 1.97 2.08 1.85 2.48 2.33 1.67 1.72 1.68 1.75 1.82 Skewness 1.28 0.51 0.49 −0.12 0.53 −0.29 0.23 −0.07 0.08 −0.10 0.07 −0.20 0.56 0.70 −0.14 0.40 0.14 −0.10 −0.31 −0.81 0.00 −0.13 −0.59 −0.40 −0.49 Kurtosis 3.93 −0.85 −0.55 −1.04 −0.41 −0.41 −0.49 −0.36 −0.63 −0.13 0.14 −0.54 −1.09 −1.03 −1.23 −1.05 −1.25 −1.18 −1.56 −1.00 −1.17 −1.22 −0.35 −0.68 −0.71 Note. The meanings of the abbreviated variable names are given in Table 1. Table options Despite a significant χ2 [n=411; df=257]=516.68, p<0.001, the other indices suggest a satisfactory fit of the model ( Fan, Thompson, & Wang, 1999; Hu & Bentler, 1995): CFI = 0.95, TLI = 0.94, and RMSEA = 0.05. As displayed in Table 3, the standardized parameter estimates were significantly related to the latent variables and the measurement models were acceptable. Relatively high levels of explained variance are obtained for consumption (R2=0.87), social comparison (R2=0.58), satisfaction (R2=0.58), and regular saving (R2=0.59). The explained variance is lower for aspiration level (R2=0.13) and very low for economic planning (R2=0.02). Table 3. Estimated measurement models Latent variable Manifest variable Coefficient t Reliabilitya Economic situation ECS1 1.00 0.75 ECS2 0.70 11.42*** ECS3 0.77 12.37*** Aspiration level ASP1 1.00 0.71 ASP2 0.62 7.23*** ASP3 0.67 8.30*** ASP4 0.63 8.12*** Social comparison SCP1 1.00 0.86 SCP2 0.77 14.67*** SCP3 0.73 19.35*** SCP4 0.67 13.90*** SCP5 0.70 16.12*** Economic planning PLN1 1.00 0.83 PLN2 0.67 12.18*** PLN3 0.73 13.14*** PLN4 0.66 12.03*** PLN5 0.69 12.67*** Regular saving RSV1 1.00 0.85 RSV2 0.71 16.19*** RSV3 0.83 20.09*** Consumption CONnd 1.00 0.48 CONd 0.52 8.66*** Satisfaction SAT1 1.00 0.94 SAT2 0.93 27.74*** SAT3 0.92 27.24*** ***p<0.001. a Construct reliability computed from the standardized loadings. Table options The estimated standardized path coefficients are presented in Table 4. As expected, the degree of consumption significantly increases with an improved economic situation. Furthermore, the influence seems to be greater when modified by aspiration level and social comparison. The economic situation has a positive and significant influence on aspiration level and social comparison, so that the aspiration level is higher and the economic situation is seen as better than for others when the economic situation is better. With a higher aspiration level and with a more positive evaluation of one's own economic situation compared to others, consumption significantly increases. Table 4. Standardized path coefficients in the estimated structural equation model (n=411) Path from Path to Coefficient t Economic situation Aspiration level 0.25 2.18* Economic situation Social comparison 0.76 10.77*** Economic situation Economic planning −0.14 -2.34* Economic situation Regular saving 0.77 11.87*** Economic situation Consumption 0.38 2.69** Aspiration level Satisfaction −0.66 −3.02** Aspiration level Consumption 0.49 5.61*** Social comparison Aspiration level 0.14 1.23 Social comparison Satisfaction 0.03 0.12 Social comparison Consumption 0.31 2.75** Economic planning Consumption −0.00 −0.02 Regular saving Consumption −0.03 −0.35 Consumption Satisfaction 1.05 2.98** * p<0.05. ** p<0.01. *** p<0.001. Table options The influence of the economic situation is as expected strong and positive for regular saving and weak and negative for economic planning. However, there is no significant influence of regular saving and economic planning on consumption. Satisfaction with the consumption level significantly increases with increases in level of consumption. Moreover, while consumption increases with aspiration level, as expected satisfaction decreases significantly with a higher aspiration level. Aspiration level seems, however, not to be influenced in a unified direction by social comparison. The degree to which households consider themselves to have a better economic situation than others significantly increases their level of consumption. There is no effect of social comparisons on satisfaction.