Compulsive Buying Among Chinese First-year Postgraduates: Prevalence And Its Associated Factors

Objective: To investigate the prevalence of compulsive buying among first-yearpostgraduates and figure out its influential factors and provide evidences for preventionand early intervention of compulsive buying among postgraduates.Method:2238first year postgraduates were selected from one medical university andtwo comprehensive universities of Hefei (the capital of Anhui province of China). Across-sectional study was implemented to investigate the respondents’ compulsivebuying scores by Faber and O’Guinn’s (1992) clinical screener, and to inquirycompulsive buyers’ contributing factors using some scale tools, including perfectionism,self-esteem, family adaptability and cohesion, coping style. On the basis of univariateanalysis, we explored the influencing factors of compulsive buying among several factorsthrough multinomial logistic regression.Results:5.14%of the respondents were classified as compulsive buyers. The group withthe higher mother’s education (2=13.42, P<0.05), higher monthly allowances(2=24.77, P<0.05), from single parent families(2=6.25, P<0.05) and urban(2=7.58,P<0.05)，only child(2=4.39, P<0.05), credit card(2=37.32, P<0.05), buying on theinternet(2=55.82, P<0.05) has the higher rate of compulsive buying. Respondents withcompulsive buying got significant higher score than those without compulsive buying onperfectionism total, self-esteem and negative coping style score, but compulsive buyerscored lower than the controls on family adaptability and cohesion, positive coping style.The multivariate analysis indicated that from Single parent families, higher monthlyallowances, buying on the internet, having credit card concern over mistakes, higherperfectionism, higher self-esteem and poorer self-esteem, lower family adaptability may be the influential factors of compulsive buying.Conclusions: Compulsive buying had occurred in the postgraduates. It might becontributed to family situation, individual economy level, perfectionism, self-esteem,family cohesion and coping style, et al. And perfectionism, self-esteem, family cohesionmight have indirect effects to compulsive buying through negative coping style. It wasnecessary for us to draw up the related intervention measures to channel psychologicalbarriers and advocated other family members to control compulsive buying.