A Study On The Chinese Residents’ Materialism And Its Relation With Perceived Social Justice And Sense Of Control

1.Objective and SignificanceAt all times and in all over the world,materialism has been the center of heated discussions as well as the research hotspot in the research area of values.For the current decades,with the development of Chinese commodity economy and the rapid accumulation of citizen’s property,materialism has grown savagely in Chinese society.Furthermore,while Chinese society is now experiencing the social transition,the increasing gap between the poor and the rich comes right after the growth of mater:ial wealth,pushing the social fairness and related topics up to the center of public attentions and opinion.The purposes of present study are:1)to examine the social groups with The Materialism Inclination Scale and analyses the Chinese citizen’s status quo of materialism;2)to explore the influence of the sense of social equity on materialism and its mechanism.My research aims to reach the meanings:to promote the development of research tools of materialism,and to enlarge the current research scope of the formation mechanism of materialism.Ⅱ.Research MethodsUsed the General Situation Questionnaire,the Material Tendencies Scale(MTS),the Material Value Scale(MVS),the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status,the Social Justice Scale,and the Sense of Control Scale to examine 2533 Chinese citizen samples1.The paper classified samples irnto samples of students(n=805)and social groups(n=1728),and then used social groups sample to verify the reliability and validity of the MTS,methods used are including items analysis,T test,reliability test,correlation analysis,ANOVA and confirmatory factor analysis.2.Used Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis to examine the invariance of the MTS between the students samples(n=805)and social groups samples(n=1728).3.Used descriptive analysis,T test,correlation analysis and ANOVA,to analyze the status quo of Materialism in Chinese citizens(n=2533)and differences of the level of materialism in demographic variables.4.Used correlation analysis and regression analysis to examine the mediating effect of the sense of control between the sense of social justice and of Materialism,the moderating effect of subjective social class between the sense of social justice and the sense of control,the moderating effect of subjective social classes between the sense of social justice and materialism.Ⅲ.Results1.The internal consistency reliability of the MTS among the social groups is 0.91,the split-half reliability of it is 0.90,the correlation index between the MTS and the MVS is 0.85,The fitness indices of the confirmatory factor analysis model(modified)is as follows:χ2/df=6.50,GFI=0.94,AGFI=0.92,NFI=0.93,CFI=0.94,RMSEA=0.06.2.Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis of the Fitting different indexes of ANFI,ΔIFI,ΔRFI,ΔTLI are all<0.05.3.There is significant differences anong genders,identities(students vs.social groups),residences,incomes of the total scores or dimensional scores of the MTS(P<0.05),and there exists negative correlation between total scores,ages(r=-0.18,P<0.01)and subjective social classes(r=-0.17,P<0.01).4.The sense of social equity negatively predict materialism(B=-0.11,P<0.01),while the sense of control has played the mediating effect in it,making up 47.37%of the total effect.5.There exists significant effects on both the interaction terms between subjective social classes and the sense of social equity towards the sense of control(B＝-0.03,P<0.01)and materialism(B=0.03,P<0.01).Ⅵ.Conclusions1.The scale of materialistic tendency has good reliability and validity among social population,and has measurement invariance between social population and students.2.The levels of materialism among Chinese citizens are influenced by gender,identity(students vs.social groups),residence,income,age,and subjective social class.3.The sense of control plays a partial mediating role between the sense of social justice and materialism,and subjective social class plays a mediating role among the sense of social justice and materialism,and the sense of social justice and the sense of control.