The Weak Scarcity Effects on Strong Materialism in East Asia

• In Event: 315 - Open Refereed Roundtables Session. B. Table 01 Shared and Contested Spaces
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 05. Context, Ethics and Values

Abstract

In this paper, I investigate the materialism and post-materialism(MPM) of four East Asian countries; China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. What are the distributions of materialists and post materialists in East Asian countries? Is the relationship between post-materialism and income, education and political orientation different in East Asian countries than it is in advanced industrial western countries? To test the hypotheses, I examine the questions using the World Values Survey(WVS) Wave 6(2010-2014) data to map out the MPM values along East Asian countries.
For the distribution of the MPM values, I found out that 1) there is higher orientation toward materialism in East Asian countries despite their shared Confucian countries, compared to Western advanced societies. For the mechanism of the MPM value orientation, the socialization model better explains the MPM value of East Asian countries than the scarcity model since East Asian countries accomplished rapid economic development and rarely experienced value changes from materialism to post materialism. My findings are that 2) higher income would not lead to higher orientation toward post materialist values, that 3) higher education level would lead to higher orientation toward post materialist values and that 4) political orientation affects MPM values in East Asian countries. The left have a higher probability of being a post-materialist.

Author

• Joohyun Park, UC Berkeley