Income Inequality, Income, and Internet Searches for Status Goods: A Cross-National Study of the Association Between Inequality and Well-Being

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• 作者：Lukasz Walasek ; Gordon D. A. Brown
• 关键词：Income inequality ; Conspicuous consumption ; Status seeking ; Consumerism ; Google Correlate ; Google Trends
• 刊名：Social Indicators Research
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：December 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：129
• 期：3
• 页码：1001-1014
• 全文大小：670 KB
• 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• 刊物主题：Social Sciences
  Sociology
  Quality of Life Research
  Microeconomics
  Public Health
  Human Geography
  
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-0921
• 卷排序：129

文摘

Is there a positive association between a nation’s income inequality and concerns with status competition within that nation? Here we use Google Correlate and Google Trends to examine frequency of internet search terms and find that people in countries in which income inequality is high search relatively more frequently for positional brand names such as Prada, Louis Vuitton, or Chanel. This tendency is stronger among well-developed countries. We find no evidence that income alone is associated with searches for positional goods. We also present evidence that the concern with positional goods does not reflect non-linear effects of income on consumer spending, either across nations or (extending previous findings that people who live in unequal US States search more for positional goods) within the USA. It is concluded that income inequality is associated with greater concerns with positional goods, and that this concern is reflected in internet searching behaviour.