The effect of attitude toward money on financial trouble and compulsive buying: Studying Hungarian consumers in debt during the financial Crisis

Abstract

This study contributes to our understanding of different aspects of consumer behavior and its potential ties to economic crisis. Compulsive buying has attracted the attention of several researchers in the consumer behavior domain dealing with both antecedents and consequences. However we know relatively little about whether and how compulsive buying is connected to the economic crisis. This event could magnify or change consumer tendencies and would allow us to tie attitudes to actual (or predicted) behavior. Our aim is to discover to develop a deeper understanding between the different dimensions of attitude toward money and financial trouble. Further we are interested whether compulsive buying would moderate this effect. We measure the dimensions of financial attitude on a scale developed by Yamauchi and Templer (1982) and use the Faber and Quinn scale (1992) for measuring compulsive buying. Our research is based on a large scale empirical study that has been carried out in 2009 in Hungary. 1000 respondents, carrying one of housing, mortgage or personal loans, aged 18-59 created the sample. Hypothesis testing was done by structural equation modeling.