Effect of Demographics on Materialism: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Materialism can be defined as the extent to which individuals engage in managing their identity by acquiring or using the products. It is a set of centrally held beliefs about the prominence of possessions in one's life. The present research studies and measures the materialism and its sub components amongst the college students. The overall materialism score was found to be on lower side. However among the sub traits of materialism; mean score of possessiveness was highest followed by envy and non-generosity. The materialism and its sub traits were analyzed w.r.t. demographic variables; like gender, education and income and it was found that gender significantly impacts the materialism whereas income and education have no impact on materialism.