Social Interaction, Uncertainty And Household Consumption

Price theory is the key of whole traditional economics, and the forming of prices always relies on various consumers'independent reaction to market signals. Accordingly, the actors who only react to market signals are the subjects of economic theory. However, in the reality, we are always exposed to the vital influence from culture, standard, social structure etc, which refered as "non-market factors", conducting differencial consuming structure in various country or areas. Therefore, we focus on the microscopic consumer behavior of China's residents under specific culture, system, events or policies, explore non-market factors affecting on consumption, and give our assessment to policies.Consumption is the important factor for economic growth, how to improve the houshoulds'consumption level is the focus of our coconomic research.We study individual and groups'consumption behavior based on the views of social interaction and uncertainty. We use the data of rural durable consumtion before 1999, testing the spillover effect in consumption behavior, and explore the reason of it. We find that the durable consumption of rural households are significant influenced by other villigers'consumtion behavior, and confirm that the social interaction in the consumtion behavior will lead to spillover, especially when a new product put in market or a househoid's first purchase, and the reason of spillover is people's social leaning and imformation shareing.Self-protection theory shows that with the increasing of uncertainty, risk avoider will do something to decrease the probability or degree of loss. Based on the survey data collected in the major cities affected by the Wenchuan earthquake, we find consumers will do self-protection after disaster, and various factors influence the cost of self-protection. Consumers'over-estimate risk mainly demonstrated on living at lower floors and in safer areas. People with high education degree, high incomes and non-local Hukou have higher propensity to move out of those regions seriously affected by the earthquake. In order to defend risk, higher-income people prefer high-quality house after earthquake. Our findings also suggest that favorable policies for housing purchase play roles in stabilizing housing consumption in the affected cities.Based on the survey data collected in the major cities affected by the earthquake, this study looks at the impacts of uncertain events and information on housing consumption. Our results show that under the family budget constraint, housholds'long and short incomes are major determinants of earthquake risk hedging behavior to house buyers. When the self-protect cost can not be exactly anticipated, the Gender and family features are shown to play important roles in determining individuals' degree of aversion to earthquake risk, whereas we cannot find the significant psychological impact on housing preferences. After earthquake, the higher-income people more care about housing quality, which will enlarge the need for high quality house. Female, the family with child and people living in heavy-loss city pay more attention on aseismatic intensity. Our results also test the different reasons for self-insurance and self-protection.