Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Irrational Factors On Cultural Consumption From The Perspective Of Behavioral Economics

Cultural consumption is a higher level of consumption demand deriving from the spiritual needs after residents’ physical needs are basically satisfied.Under the macro background of China’s consumption upgrading,cultural consumption has gradually become an important part of residents’ consumption.However,because the content of cultural consumption is to consume spiritual goods and symbolic goods,the consumer’s cultural environment,the concept class,the popular trend,the psychological state and other irrational factors have a strong influence on the residents’ cultural consumption decision.In view of this,on the premise of the limited rationality of the consumer,this paper applies the framework of behavioral economics to explore the influence of irrational factors on cultural consumption on the microcosmic level.The increase of consumption caused by the decrease of consumers’ self-control is the core mechanism of irrational factors affecting consumers’ decision-making.Therefore,this paper uses the Richard H.Thaler(2016)irrational decision frame model and applies the two indicators of life pressure and mental account to measure the influence of irrational factors on the cultural consumption of residents.The data of 4016 family samples from 2012 and 2016 in China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)were used for empirical analysis.Firstly,this paper uses family house price savings ratio as the proxy variable of life pressure,and the property income ratio as the proxy variable of Mental account,and empirically tests the influence of irrational factors on the cultural consumption of residents.Empirical data shows that:(1)There is a significant positive correlation between living pressure and residents’ cultural consumption.(2)Mental account effect has a significant impact on Residents’ cultural consumption.(3)the mental accounting effect has a positive moderating effect on the impact of life stress on cultural consumption.Secondly,from the two dimensions of the characteristics of consumers and the characteristics of cultural products,this paper empirically tests the transmission mechanism of irrational factors on Residents’ cultural consumption.The empirical results show that:(1)Under the conditions of controlling other variables,irrational factors have a higher impact coefficient on the cultural consumption of consumers with relatively self-control.Therefore,consumer self-control is one of the transmission mechanisms of irrational factors on cultural consumption.(2)On the basis of controlling other variables,house price savings ratio have a significant positive impact on the consumption of relatively cheap consumer goods,represented by food,and there is no significant impact on the consumption of consumer goods,represented by durable consumer goods.Therefore,the lower unit value of cultural products is the second main transmission mechanism of irrational factors to cultural consumption.The innovation of this paper is mainly reflected in two aspects:research perspective and research sample.From the perspective of research,this paper combines psychological theory with cultural consumption theory.It breaks through the traditional economics that defines the consumer behavior subject as the basic hypothesis of rational economic man.It adds the influence of cognitive bias factor to the influence factors of the consumption decision,and discusses the influence of the life pressure and the consumption culture on the consumer’s cultural consumption decision,and the factors that affect the cultural consumption from the material wealth.The rich category extends to the category of consumer psychological cognition.In terms of research samples,previous studies on the influencing factors of cultural consumption mainly focus on the provinces and municipalities in China.Consumer research,especially at the micro level,should be based on micro data.Therefore,this paper applies the micro data research of China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)to expand the research on the influence factors of cultural consumption to the micro level.