Cultural consumption as compensatory strategy of cultural capital: Evidence from China

• In Event: 3166 - Section on the Sociology of Consumers and Consumption Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 4: Money and Markets

Abstract

Extensive research shows that consumption is responsive to future risk in general, and consumption for cultural goods is the most among other types. According to the theory of social reproduction, people with higher cultural capital are more inclined to raise their cultural consumption. In this paper, I test the theory using empirical evidence from China, a country that urges to boost cultural consumption recently. I use quantitative methods to investigate the most recent data of Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS). The results suggest that the enrollment of private medical insurance is positively influencing cultural consumption at the family level, whilst the impact of state-fund insurances or private pension system on cultural consumption is statistically insignificant. Results also show that people with lower cultural capital are more responsive to their enrollment in private medical insurance as they increase their cultural consumption most significantly among others. While my findings here support the previous research on the high-responsiveness of cultural consumption towards future risk, they challenge the theory of social reproduction, implicating a "compensatory" rather than a "reproductive" strategy in the social practices.

Author

• Ke Nie, University of California San Diego