Scarcity or luxury: Which leads to adolescent greed? Evidence from a large-scale Chinese adolescent sample

Because greed is associated with various destructive outcomes, understanding the developmental precursors to dispositional greed in adolescence is of great importance. However, there are few empirical studies on this topic. The current study aimed to examine the relationship between childhood socioeconomic status (CSES) and adolescent greed and the moderating effect of family size. Two competing hypotheses were proposed. One is the scarcity hypothesis, which claims that CSES may be negatively related to adolescent greed. Another is the luxury hypothesis, which proposes that the richer the environment one grew up in, the more likely one is to develop dispositional greed.

A cross-sectional sample of 3,200 adolescents (11-19 years old, 1,712 females, 1,356 males, and 132 of unknown gender) from North, Northwest, Middle and South China completed the questionnaire sets. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted.

CSES was positively correlated with dispositional greed, and the moderating effect of family size was significant.

The current study provides evidence supporting the luxury hypothesis over the scarcity hypothesis. In addition, adolescent dispositional greed increases with an increase in CSES when there is only one child in the family, while this is not the case for children with siblings. The theoretical and practical implications of the current study results as well as future research directions are discussed.