Conspicuous Consumption and Social Status in Korea: An Assessment of Reciprocal Effects

Abstract

Characterizing conspicuous consumption as one of the salient social phenomena in

rapidly industrializing societies, we investigate the reciprocal relationship between conspicuous consumption and self evaluation of own social status in Korea. Data analyses of a sample of 531 Korean urban households confirm the following arguments: (1) Conspicuous consumption tends to inflate a household's self evaluation of its own social status beyond the social status determined by its other socioeconomic statuses (i.e., education, income, occupation, and wealth). (2) Inflated social status and conspicuous consumption reciprocally reinforce each other. That is, those households which consume conspicuously tend to inflate self evaluations of social status, the maintenance of which in turn requires more conspicuous consumption. Further implications are discussed in detail..