The relationship of materialism to debt and financial well-being: the case of Iceland’s perceived prosperity

By R. B. Garðarsdóttir, H. Dittmar. 2012

290 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In Iceland, levels of debt had risen to an unprecedented extreme in the years prior to the country’s economic collapse in October 2008. This rise occurred in the context of a consumer culture highlighting supposed psychological benefits of consumer goods. This paper reports findings from two studies, conducted during an economic boom in Iceland, examining the association of materialism and indicators of financial well-being: amount of debt, financial worries, spending tendency, money-management skills and compulsive buying. Study 11Study 2 was originally presented at the Thjodarspegill Conference at the University of Iceland, October, 2009. Study 1 was part of the first author’s doctoral thesis work, originally presented at the Nordic Consumer Conference in Helsinki 2007.1 (N=271) showed that people who endorse materialistic values have more financial worries, worse money-management skills and greater tendency towards compulsive buying and spending. Study 2 (N=191) replicates the findings of Study 1 and further shows that amount of debt, including mortgage, can be directly linked to materialism, controlling for income and money-management skills. The research contributes to the psychology of materialism and overspending and provides an evidence-based foundation for designing interventions encouraging individuals to improve their financial well-being.

Subfields: Marketing, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a3facd5309a2e732bff1c40e9bb62f24ae8fe0f1

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Citations in the corpus

Intrinsic factors affecting impulsive buying behaviour—Evidence from India (2014, methodology): “Further, as people higher on materialism are not only found to have more favourable attitudes toward spending (Garðarsdóttir and Dittmar, 2012) but have also been linked to wasting money on relatively unimportant possession (Bae, 2013), possibility remains that individuals high on materialism score ”
Material Parenting: How the Use of Goods in Parenting Fosters Materialism in the Next Generation (2015, background): “Studies have shown that materialistic people consume more than others (Garðarsdóttir and Dittmar 2012; Watson 2003), and the research presented here suggests that adults who received many material rewards during childhood will be likely to continue rewarding themselves with material goods when…”
Impulsive buying tendency: Measuring important relationships with a new perspective and an indigenous scale (2016, unknown): “…Mohan, Sivakumaran, & Sharma, 2013), shopping enjoyment tendency (Bong, 2010; Chavosh, Halimi, & Namdar, 2011; Mohan et al., 2013), ma-terialism ( Garðarsdóttir & Dittmar, 2012), personality (Bratko, Butkovic, & Bosnjak, 2013; Herabadi, Verplanken, & Van Knippenberg, 2009), and culture…”
Age differences in financial decision making: T he benefits of more experience and less negative emotions (2018, methodology): “Individuals vary in their motivation to engage in complicated tasks, with more effort put into money management being correlated with less debt accumulation and less impulsive buying (Garðarsdóttir & Dittmar, 2012).”
Buying to Blunt Negative Feelings: Materialistic Escape from the Self (2016, background): “Materialists worry more about their finances (Gardarsdottir & Dittmar, 2012) and value financial security more than do other people (Keng et al., 2000; Richins & Dawson, 1992).”