The Research Of Chinese Rural Residents’ Consumption Behaviors Under Uncertain Conditions

Since the reform and opening in1978, our country has been the one of the quickest countries on economic development, the achievements are obvious. But with the expansion of the economic scale and the process of urbanization and industrialization, our economic growth appears relatively serious tilting problem of the structure:The investment rate remains high, and contribution rate of consumption is insufficient, which are considered to be the important risk factors of influencing the sustainable and stable development on China’s economy. The rural market is the important component of China’s consumer market, and the potential is tremendous, the rural residents, accounting for more than half of the population in China, only consume about one-third of the national consumer goods, and rural residents’ consumption has strong multiplier effect. We can say that the rural market once be started, it has special significance to change the situation of the lack of domestic demand and promote economic health, sustainable development.China’s rural market is a relatively weak market in reality, rural residents are easily effected by the uncertainty factors, especially in the economic transition period, because of the community’s dual structure having not be thoroughly eliminated, weak characteristics, rural residents’ income growing slowly, the income gap between the urban and rural being more widening, the rural credit market being insufficient, the shortage of social security resources, the relevant policies changing frequently, and so on, all these factors will enhance rural residents’uncertainty feeling, and effect their consumption behaviors. This paper firstly analyzes the rural residents’main uncertainty feeling and characteristics of consumption behaviors in the process of China’s economic transformation, then according to the general to special route, trying to explore the specific mechanism theory of the uncertainty influencing on consumption behavior, based on this, the paper uses the macro data and panel data, to empirically test the uncertainty influence on rural consumers’ behaviors. The results of the study show that:Firstly, the index of "the expected deviation rate of balance income" which is used to quantize the uncertainty is negative. But it doesn’t say that the uncertainty promote the consumption. Because the index of "the expected deviation rate of balance income" has directivity, so when the deviation rate is greater than zero, it means the rural residents’balance income appears unexpected increase, and the positive uncertainty will promote consumption. Adversely when the deviation rate is less than zero, it means the rural residents’balance income appears unexpected decrease, and the negative uncertainty will inhibit consumption. For comparison, this paper also uses the standard deviation of income (spending) growth rate to measure income uncertainty (expenditure uncertainty), the regression results show that the income uncertainty is negative, which means the fluctuation of income growth rate inhibit consumption, but the consumption uncertainty is not significant, this may be because of the rural residents’unbalanced and serrated consumption path, for some major spending, they have an expectation ahead of spending.Secondly, when the rural residents’uncertainty feeling is in weakened state, the consumers’income elasticity coefficient is greater than in unweakened state, this shows that the psychological state of uncertainty has influence on rural residents’ consumption behaviors, and when the rural residents’uncertainty feeling is in weakened state, whose behaviors are more active. In addition, compared to the weakened state, the rural residents’ consumption behaviors are more sensitive, it coincides with the the "loss aversion" ideas of prospect theory.Thirdly, from the effect of uncertainty on rural residents’ consumption behaviors in different areas, we can find that:In the national, the eastern and middle regions, the "good years" has active role in promoting rural residents’ spending, and the "bad years" has restrained rural residents’ spending, and when the rural residents face same level of uncertainty, their consumption behaviors are more sensitive to the "bad years". But in the western region, the effect of negative uncertainty in the "bad years" isn’t significant, which may be because of the rural residents’ consumption type mainly on the necessary goods. If we compare the regression coefficients between the national, the eastern, the middle and the western regions, we can find that the higher level of economic development, the bigger consumption elasticity, and rural residents’ reflection more sensitive to uncertainty. Fourthly, from the effect of uncertainty on rural residents’ consumption behaviors in different level of income, we can find that the effect of uncertainty becomes bigger and bigger with the improvement of income, no matter it is in"good years" or "bad years"Fifthly, from the effect of uncertainty on rural residents’ consumption behaviors in different goods, we can find that:①Both in the "good years" and the "bad years",the uncertainty hasn’t obvious influence on the spending of food and residence. Food belongs to the necessaries of life, less affected by uncertainty factors. The residence also has the characters of necessary goods, because the residence belongs to big spending type, so rural residents have an expectation ahead of the house spending, there isn’t uncertainty factors.②The "bad years" hasn’t obvious influence on the spending of clothing too, it is also because the clothing belongs to necessary goods, but the "good years" has significant effect on the spending of clothing. When the years are excellent, the rural residents often buy some clothes for themselves and their family members, both reflects the care of his family, and shows that they have got achievements.③oth the household facilities, article s&Services and transportation&communication are affected by the uncertainty factors. The positive uncertainty in "good years" has active role on the spending of these two goods, but the negative uncertainty in "bad years" has the adverse effect.④In the "good years", the rural residents have high enthusiasm on the spending of entertainment activities, and pay more attention to children’s education. But in the "bad years", only has little influence on them. On the one hand, rural residents also have an expectation ahead of this spending; on the other hand, rural residents pay more and more attention to children’s education with the increasing of income and decreasing of children.⑤In the "good years" the rural residents usually don’t increase the spending of medical appliances&articles, even reduce them. But in the "bad years", they increase the spending of medical appliances&articles. The reasons may be that the uncertainty’s emerging is related to the rural residents’family members whether have diseases.Sixthly, from the effect of uncertainty on rural residents’ consumption behaviors in different times, either the positive uncertainty’s improving role or the the negative uncertainty’s inhibbiting role, their influences have been strengthened.For comparison, the income uncertainty, which measured by the standard deviation of income (spending) growth rate, also has strengthened the influence.Finally, this paper gives summary and explanations for the research conclusions and policy implications.The paper mainly has three innovation points:First, it puts forward the unbalanced and serrated consumption path for the rural residents. Second, it uses the "expected deviation rate of balance income" to quantize the uncertainty, which has strongly scientific value. Third, it takes the "loss aversion" ideas of prospect theory to the empirical analysis, with the help of dummy variable tools, this paper has compared and analyzed the psychological states of weakening and unweakening, and the condition of "good years" and "bad years", whose uncertainty how to effect rural residents’consumption behaviors. Such settings help the area of study further refined and expanding.The paper has two shortages need further efforts to deal with them. Firstly, it should consider the direction of uncertainty in the theory model. Secondly, it better get a survey data of the uncertainty factors and psychology for the analysis.