Chinese Consumer Confidence, Regional Differences In Study

Consumer confidence, as a subjective indicator reflecting the consumer psychology, is affected by the regional development, traditional culture, personal social status, and many other factors. This study seeks to decompose the variability of consumer confidence index, and measure the effect of various factors on consumer confidence, which can be used in the comparison analysis of consumer confidence in different regions.Research on the variation of consumer confidence refers to two-level-analysis including consumer-level and region-level. Characteristics of individual consumers as well as the regional traits as a whole can affect the consumer's psychology and attitudes. Because of the intra-class correlation, the traditional multiple regression equations would lead to the problem of biased estimated value. As to this problem, the establishment of Hierarchical Linear Model is just able to meet analytical requirements of this special data structure, and achieve the research purposes of decomposing factors affecting consumer confidence.From the variation of consumer confidence among the different cities, the residents who live in the city with advanced Tertiary Industry always show relatively lower consumer confidence. Moreover, the higher Average Earnings of Employed Person would stimulate the increase of local consumer confidence. As for the features of resident crowd, the young consumers' confidence is the highest in the whole society. With age increased, the pressure from marriage, family, work, etc. would cause the middle-aged people to be more cautious in the purchasing attitude. Although the income is growing, the confidence is difficult to rise. In addition, laid-off people with low incomes and aged features are more inclined to be pessimistic in consumption.Discovery and study of these different factors that impact the consumer confidence is of great importance to interpret the insufficient domestic demand and sluggish consumption in our country. Therefore, we can provide policy-makers with the information reference and problem solving ideas.