Mai dongxi: Social influence, materialism and China's one-child policy

Abstract

This paper investigates the moderating role of the China's one-child policy on the relationship between susceptibility to social influence from parents and peers and the levels of materialism of consumers. By comparing Chinese consumers who were born after the implementation of the one-child policy with their Indian and Thai counterparts, our study finds that the previously documented positive relationship between peer influence and materialism as well as the negative relationship between parental influence and materialism are greater for consumers from China than those from India and Thailand. We theorize that these differences are due to the ability and motivation of only-children to internalize the materialistic values from their parents and peers. Further, we demonstrate that these differences in social influence are restricted to in-group influences (i.e., parents and peers) and do not manifest in the case of out-group influences (e.g., salespeople).