The influence of childhood socioeconomic status on indulgent consumption

Consumers routinely confront goal conflicts, navigating the tension between persevering in goal pursuit and succumbing to the temptation of indulgent purchases. While prior literatures have endeavored to explore diverse factors influencing indulgent consumption, they have largely overlooked the longitudinal lens of consumer development to uncover deeper, underlying causes. Childhood socioeconomic background has been established as a critical factor influencing various behaviors both in early life and adulthood. This study aims to explore the impact of childhood socioeconomic status on indulgent consumption in adulthood, and to examine the mediating role of pleasure pursuit in this relationship, as well as the moderating effect of individuals' sense of worthiness.

Across four behavioral experiments, spanning three domains of indulgence-related decisions and relying on different methods of childhood socioeconomic status measurement, this study sheds light on how consumers of different childhood socioeconomic status to choose when facing a conflict decision (self-control vs. indulgence). A total of 627 participants from China (66.19% female, M_age = 30.46) were recruited through the Credamo platform for this study, and SPSS analytical software was utilized to conduct comprehensive analyses on the relevant data, encompassing primary effect analysis, mediation analysis, and moderated mediation analysis.

The study corroborates that individuals with high childhood socioeconomic status are more likely to choose indulgence compared to those with low childhood socioeconomic status (β = 0.24, p < 0.05). This effect is found to be independent of people's current level of socioeconomic status (p > 0.05), which is mediated by differences in pleasure pursuit [β = 0.1026, 95% CI= (0.0312, 0.1688)]. In other words, individuals who grew up wealthy are generally more likely to pursue pleasure (novel experiences and potential rewards) from decision-making, thus increasing their choice of indulgences. Furthermore, the strength of this effect is moderated by individuals' sense of worthiness (β = 0.15, p < 0.05). Lastly, sense of control has been disqualified as a plausible psychological mechanism underlying this phenomenon [95% CI= (-0.035, 0.021)].

This study demonstrates that childhood socioeconomic status has a significant positive impact on indulgent consumption in adulthood. The underlying psychological mechanisms and boundary conditions of this influence were also examined. The findings offer a novel theoretical perspective on the antecedents of indulgent consumption and provide valuable insights for businesses in developing targeted marketing strategies and enhancing consumer wellbeing.