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Value Change and Consumer Materialism in Taiwan: An Empirical Perspective

This study focuses on the personal and consumer values of Taiwanese students. Particular focus is
placed on determining whether the materialism scales of Ronald Inglehart (1997), Richard Belk
(1985), and Marsha Richins and Scott Dawson (1992) can be used interchangeably to measure
materialism or whether they measure slightly different dimensions of respondents¡¦ personal values.
The World Values Survey was used to allow the current sample to be compared to international
results, as well as to past surveys of Taiwanese. Correlation analysis was utilized to determine the
strength of relationships between the three materialism scales. The analysis phase showed that
materialism as defined by Belk (1985) and Richins and Dawson (1992) were more strongly related
to each other than to the materialism scale created by Inglehart. This study also finds that while
the population of Taiwan is very similar to that of China based on the findings of the World Values
Survey, the current sample of students is actually dissimilar to the general population of Taiwan.
The current sample implies a mixture of materialist and postmaterialist values that more closely
resembles the populations of Japan or the United States than the general population of Taiwan.
These findings are consistent with literature suggesting that younger, more affluent sectors of a
population will show stronger postmaterialist values than older, less affluent groups.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-1016109-164201
Date16 October 2009
CreatorsW. Bolton, Timothy
ContributorsSan-Pui Lam, David Emanuel Andersson, Yen-Chun Jim Wu
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-1016109-164201
Rightsnot_available, Copyright information available at source archive

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