Determinants for Consumption Materialism among Late Adolescents in China

Abstract

Past research examining materialism and adolescence has often focused on investigating the relationship between materialism and the adolescent’s personality traits and consumption patterns (Achenreiner 1997; Goldberg et al. 2003). Further, researchers found that, from a developmental perspective, parental values are the primary means of socializing adolescents to specific values (Kilby 1993). For example, adolescents that value material possessions more than they value self-acceptance, affiliation, or community feelings are associated with more materialistic and less supportive parents (Kasser, Ryan and Zax 1995). In this study, we aim to build on this line of research by exploring historical/environmental factors that could influence the adolescent’s development of materialist value. We investigated this issue in the context of China for two reasons. First, past research has seldom explored these issues in non-Western countries. Also, the dramatic economic and social changes in contemporary China provide us with a unique opportunity to understand the extent societal forces could help shape teenagers’ values.