产品地位与自我建构对储蓄和消费选择的影响研究

Impacts of Product Status and Self-Construal on Saving and Spending Decisions

自我建构研究发现,面临储蓄和消费选择时,独立自我比相依自我更倾向于消费,相依自我比独立自我更倾向于储蓄。但很少有学者关注相依自我主导的中国人为什么偏爱地位产品消费。本文通过两组实验,研究产品地位与自我建构对个体储蓄和消费选择的影响,并进一步从心理效用角度进行机理分析。研究发现,当产品能体现地位时,相依自我比独立自我更倾向于消费;当产品不能体现地位时,独立自我比相依自我更倾向于消费;消费地位产品时,地位提升感知中介了自我建构对储蓄和消费的选择,相依自我比独立自我感知到了更多的地位提升,从而表现出相依自我比独立自我更倾向于消费。

Recently, study on saving and spending decisions using self-construal became a new research perspective. Some scholars had found that individuals with high interdependent self were more likely to save than the counterparts with high independent self when facing decision of saving and spending. The reason that Chinese fa vored saving over spending was that Chinese self-construal is interdependent. Although it could explain why Chinese favored saving over spending, it is seldom studied why Chinese showed generosity in status consumption. This paper suggested that saving and spending decisions would be affected by product status and self-eonstrual, and it could be explained by the sense of status provided. The proposals were tested through two experiments. Based on the literatures, the stimuli that weakly or strongly associated with status were firstly selected by a pretest among the university undergraduates and a pretest among the employed adults. The study selected a bag （general packing bag versus Gucci＇ s packing bag） as stimuli in the university undergraduates experiment and a picture of 50th school anniversary （mass-produced versus limited-edition） a, stimuli in the employed adult experi ment. Experiment 1 examined whether the status would affect the decisions of saving and spending among the different self-construal. The experiment was conducted among 122 undergraduates in Shanghai. Participants were ran domly assigned to conditions in a 2 （ self-construal ： interdependent, independent） x 2 （ product status ： low status, high status） between-participants design. Participants were randomly manipulated into interdependent self or independent self through different reading materials. The results showed that the status affected the different self-construal individual＇ s decisions of saving and spending. The independent spent more on the product with weak associations to status than the interdependent. In contrast, the interdependent spent more on the product with strong associations to status than the independent. Experiment 2 was designed to provide evidence for why the interdependent favored status-related products by introducing the sense of status provided. The experiment was conducted among 119 employed adults of night college program in Shanghai. The participants were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions （product status： low status, high status） and the self-construal was measured by the improved Singelis＇ self-construal scales. The self-construal index was constructed by the measured self-construal scores and sense of status provided was measured in the group associations with high status. The results showed that the inter- dependent was inclined to spend more on the high status product than independent and the independent spent more on the low status product than the interdependent, which replicated the initiJ findings of experiment 1 by using the chronic self-construal instead of the manipulation of self-construal used in the experiment 1. The experiment 2 also found that the interdependent got more sense of status with high status product than the independent among the high status group. The analysis result of mediation tests showed that sense of status provided mediated the effect of selfconstrual on the saving and spending in status consumption. This research provides some theoretical and managerial implications. It first proposes that the effect of self-con- strual on saving and spending decisions can be affected by product status, and the effect can be explained by sense of status provided. The conclusion can be used to explain the phenomenon that Chinese shows generosity while spending on products strongly associated with status. The research can imp^ove the understanding of the relation- ships between self-construal and status, and it enriches the existing literatures on the decisions of saving and spend- ing as well as the theory of self-construal. In practice, the conclusion is helpful to formulate appropriate policies that are consistent with Chinese traditional culture and consumer behavior characteristics. The consequent will boost the consumer demand and effectively promote the sustained consumption growth.