Chinese Millenials' happiness and materialism: Explanations from two life‐course theories, self‐esteem, and money‐attitudes

• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Author: Helen Inseng Duh,Hong Yu,Yuefeng Ni
• Date: 01 December 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joca.12368

SPECIAL ISSUE

Chinese Millenials' happiness and materialism:

Explanations from two life-course theories,

self-esteem, and money-attitudes

Helen Inseng Duh

1

| Hong Yu

2

| Yuefeng Ni

3

1

Marketing Department, School of

Business Sciences, University of the

Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,

South Africa

2

Ted Rogers School of Retail

Management, Ryerson University,

Toronto, Canada

3

Department of Marketing, Beijing

Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

Correspondence

Helen Inseng Duh, Marketing

Department, School of Business Sciences,

University of the Witwatersrand,

Johannesburg, South Africa.

Email: duhhelen@yahoo.com

Abstract

Born in an era of single-child families and raised in the

rapidly growing and globally connected milieu where

material wealth is ranked at the top of life's achievements,

Chinese millennials are feared to be materialistic. We

assessed whether this was the case and whether happiness

is gained from materialism. By questioning processes

through which materialism develops, we examined how

self-esteem, money attitudes and human capital, and

socialization life-course theories explain materialism. We

collected data from 207 millennials and conducted struc-

tural equation modeling and mediation analyses. We

found that Chinese millennials were moderately material-

istic and do obtain some happiness from materialism.

Materialism was explained by the human capital and

socialization life-course theory, whereby self-esteem medi-

ated in how family resources received and peer communi-

cation during adolescence impacted materialism at young

adulthood. Self-esteem was a good predictor of five

money-attitude dimensions, which can help and hinder

materialism depending on the dimension consumers hold.

1|INTRODUCTION

Millennials have been defined with various age ranges. However, a recent study (Rita

et al. (2019) report that Millennials are individuals born between 1982 and 2002. They comprise

Received: 30 October 2019 Revised: 1 January 2021 Accepted: 16 February 2021

DOI: 10.1111/joca.12368

© 2021 American Council on Consumer Interests.

1306 J Consum Aff. 2021;55:1306–1332.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joca

young adult college/university students (18–24 years old), young adult professionals (25–

34 years old), and adult professionals (35–38 years old). Millennials are categorized according to

their socioeconomic stages of development, income generation, and spending power (Duh and

Struwig, 2015; Makgopa, 2018; Rita et al., 2019; Iqbal, 2020). For example, the 18–24-year-old

Millennials' lives are characterized by major life-changing experiences, such as self-

identification and definition (Roberts et al., 2003), college entry and exit, entering into the job

market, earning and independently managing money, and incurring debt for the first time

(Gutter and Copur, 2011). Although some of the young adult college/university Millennials do

not earn income or have only part-time jobs and receive money from their parents or scholar-

ships, Makgopa (2018) reports that they spend more on electronics, clothing, and other beauty

products than the preceding and subsequent generation.

The 25–34-year-old young adult professional Millennials are educated, working, (some are

young parents) who make up around 50% of middle-class consumers' spending power (Duh and

Struwig, 2015). They are a lucrative market for estate properties, cars, home appliances, cos-

metics, and clothing products (Duh and Struwig, 2015). Millennials aged 35+(referred to as

“The Established”) are adults, often parents of tweens (9–12 years old) and teenagers, and thus

their expenditures are mainly for their children (Duh and Struwig, 2015).

Generally, Millennials are a large, profitable, and influential consumer segment (Migacz

and James Petrick, 2018). Compared with other generational cohorts, Millennials have been

found to be most individualistic and do the greatest volume of online shopping (Ladhari

et al., 2019), which comes with the temptation of excessive use of credit cards and compulsive

buying (Norum, 2008; He et al., 2018). Millennials are also highly consumption-oriented,

influenced by peer pressure, and display the highest level of status consumption when com-

pared with Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) and Gen Xers born between 1965 and

1980 (Eastman and Liu, 2012). In China, Noormohamed (2019) reports that Millennials “spend

more money on the best entertainment, experiences and the most famous and trendy items

than those born prior to the 1980s”(p. 425).

In an estimation and comparison of the share of total consumption of luxury, branded, and

status products, Noormohamed (2019) predicts that Millennials' share will reach 69% by 2021

compared with 31% expected from older generations. The Millennials in China are driven to

luxury, branded, and status consumption because they were born in an era of single-child fami-

lies and raised in a rapidly growing, commercialized, and globally connected Chinese economy

(Li et al., 2018). Compared with the older generations, Chinese Millennials grew up in greater

affluence, had higher discretional income, and experienced a highly brand-conscious China

(Noormohamed, 2019). They are a large population—about 415 million in 2015 (Lu and

Yiu, 2015), which constitutes about 31% of China's population and a greater population than

that of the United States and Canada combined. Also in 2015, the Chinese Millennials collec-

tively had US$2.4 trillion in purchasing power, a figure expected to increase to US$3 trillion by

2025 (Lu and Yiu, 2015).

Unlike other Millennials globally, the Chinese counterparts are the so-called “One Child

Policy”generation, also known as the little emperors or little princesses. (Pope, Jennifer,

et al., 2020). Consequently, the Chinese Millennials enjoy the attention and resources of all

adults in the household (typically four grand-parents and two parents). The six parents lavish

the one child with gifts, money, and luxury (Pope, Jennifer, et al., 2020). These create values of

individualism, self-centeredness, non-generosity, personality disorders, and social problems

(Cameron et al., 2013; Tang et al., 2017), most of which are ingredients for the development of

materialistic values according to Belk (1985).

INSENG DUH ET AL.1307