The study you completed tests our prediction that prioritizing economic value when making spending decisions leads to people buying material items whereas prioritizing happiness when making spending decisions leads to people buying life experiences.

In this study we asked you to imagine facing four buying decisions, each between a material and experiential purchase. However, we instructed half of you to make your decisions based on maximizing your economic value from your purchases (i.e., select the purchases you believe will allow you to say “this was the best use of my money”) while we instructed the other half of the you to select your purchases based on maximizing your happiness in life (i.e., select the purchases you believe will allow you to say “this purchase increased my happiness in life the most”).

In the graph below, from the four pairs of material items and life experience, we report the proportion of life experiences selected. The proportion of life experienced you selected is represented by the green bar. The proportion of life experiences selected by those who were instructed to maximize their economic value is represented by the brown bar whereas the proportion of life experiences selected by those who were instructed to maximize their happiness is represented by the orange bar.




We are still in the process of collecting data, but if our prediction is right, then the orange bar will be higher than the brown bar. This would show that when people try to maximize their economic value they tend to buy material items and when they try to maximize their happiness in life they buy life experiences.

Do you think you should spend more money on experiences and less on material items?

If so, here is our advice:

  • Make your experience social – after all, people are happier spending money with and on others.
  • Buy experiences that fit your personality, taste, and values. Find the right person-experience fit. If you don’t care for the arts, you won’t like attending an art museum (even if it is an experience).

To learn more about your experiential consumption habits, take the Experiential Buying Tendency Scale

To learn more about experiential purchasing, you can read this CNN article.

Do you have ideas on improving this study? Or did you encounter any difficulties in answering the questions? Click here to send a message to the creators of this study.




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