Favorite Possessions Protect Subjective Well-Being Under Income Inequality
研究发现，收入不平等会降低人们的主观幸福感，但关注心爱之物能减少社会比较，从而缓冲这种负面影响，对消费者福利有启示。
Rising income inequality is taking a toll on people's subjective well-being (SWB), and many commentators have implicated the role of material possessions, and thereby marketing, in this regard. Making a more nuanced argument, this research proposes that certain material possessions—namely, favorite possessions—can mitigate the detrimental psychological effect of income inequality on SWB. In support of this proposition, experimental data from nine countries (N = 3,687) and social media posts from 138 countries (N = 31,332) converge to show that, while SWB generally declines as income inequality increases, encouraging consumers to attend to their favorite possessions can mitigate the negative effect of inequality on SWB. This is because attending to favorite possessions reduces consumers’ tendency to make social comparisons related to material resources and wealth, which otherwise arise when income inequality is high. Consequently, even when they perceive high income inequality, consumers feel less deprived relative to others, which buffers their SWB. These findings have meaningful consumer welfare implications. In particular, one way consumers can feel happier with their quality of life in an unequal society is to avoid comparing their material wealth with that of others and instead attend to the material possessions most special to them.