Consumption And Savings: Interaction Effect Of Self-construal And Social Presence

China has a high saving rate over50%, which is more than the shareof consumption in GDP, becoming the highest saving rate country in theworld and bringing a series of economic and social problems. Therefore,studying consumers’ consumption and savings choosing is of greatsignificance for stimulating consumption and solving the problem of highsaving rate. The past researches on consumption and savings mostly focusedon macro-economic factors such as income, social security and pension, butrecently researchers began to focus on the effects of individualpsychological and behavioral factors such as social, culture and context onconsumption and savings choosing. Self-construal and social presencewhich we will explore are two factors having impacts on consumerbehavior.Firstly, two preliminary experiments are conducted to choose theappropriate stimulus. Secondly, in the situation of goal conflict, experiment1is conducted to study the effect of social presence on consumption andsavings choosing. Thirdly, experiment2is conducted to explore theinteraction of social presence and self-construal by means of2-by-2experiment and the internal reason of this interaction.We found that:(1) When there is social presence, consumers are morelikely to choose behaviors in line with consumption goal than when there isno social presence;(2) There are interaction effects of self-construal andsocial presence on consumption and savings choosing;(3) Forinterdependent individuals, pressure caused by social presence is a partialmediator on the effect of social presence on consumption and savingschoosing. These results will help to enrich the related theories of consumptionand savings, social presence and self-construal, and it will promote sales forretail stores and reduce savings rate.