The Conspicuous Consumption Of Lower-class Undergraduate Students: A Psychological Compensation Perspective

Recently, Network loans are very popular on college campuses. In this background, many lower-class students take loans to consume. Among these, Extreme negative event is not few, such as suicide for debt, drop out of school. There is no doubt that most of people will feel sorry for these lower-class students, but what is more important is that, we must find out the reason why they would take the risk of losing future to do conspicuous consumption. Based on the theory of compensatory consumption, this dissertation tested the influence of context factors (status symbol) and individual factors (self -esteem) on conspicuous consumption of lower-class students.Based on the theory of compensatory consumption, using questionnaire method, study 1 collected survey data in the college of city of Wuhan in china, getting a sample of 299 individuals. After linear regression analysis, the results showed that the effect of an individual’s subject social class on conspicuous consumption is significant, lower-class students have stronger conspicuous consumption motivation. And the self-esteem in the rich-poor gap played fully mediate effect between subject social class and conspicuous consumption motivation. The lower one’s subject social class is, the lower he value himself, and the stronger his conspicuous consumption motivation is.Study 2 demonstrated that the conspicuous consumption tendency between lower-class undergraduate and higher class students didn’t exist significant difference, under higher state esteem. But under lower state esteem, the conspicuous consumption tendency of lower-class undergraduate is higher than the higher-class. Study 2 proved that the conspicuous consumption of lower-class undergraduate students is aim to compensate their self-esteem.On the other hand, Study 3, using an experimental procedure to manipulate the symbol of pen, demonstrated that the lower-class undergraduate students who under the status symbol condition reported higher willingness to pay than higher -class. But, when the pen is high quality products, their willingness to pay is lower than higher-class. Study 3 proved that the conspicuous consumption of lower-class undergraduate students is seeking for status symbol as compensation.