Positional concern, gender, and household expenditures: a case study in Yunnan province
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to attempt to investigate farmer’s positional concerns in rural China, and how the positional concerns correlate with household expenditures on visible goods.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conduct a survey-based experiment to measure farmers’ positional concerns, and employ econometric models to examine the determinants of the degree of positional concern and how the positional concern affects household expenditures on visible goods.
Findings
The authors find that Chinese farmers have strong positional concerns for income, and high-income households are more concerned with relative position. Furthermore, there is a significant difference between males and females with respect to correlation between degree of positionality and household expenditures on visible goods. For females, there is a positive correlation between degree of positionality and household expenditures on clothes, restaurants, and mobile phones, respectively. For males, there is a positive correlation between degree of positionality and household expenditures on mobile phones.
Social implications
The government policy thus should pay attention to the positional goods, and the relevant consumption tax by increasing the prices of visible goods could be considered or suggested in the future even in the rural areas.
Originality/value
This paper provides complementary evidence on Chinese farmers’ positional concerns, and how the degree of positional concern relates to household expenditures on visible goods.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Financial support from the Word Bank, Rights and Resources Initiatives, the Ford Foundation, the Swedish Agency for International Development and Cooperation (Sida) to the Environmental Economics Unit at the University of Gothenburg, Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the Research Funds of Renmin University of China (13XNK011) are gratefully acknowledged. The authors have received valuable comments from Fredrik Carlsson, Håkan J. Holm, Dick Durevall, Olof Johansson-Stenman, Peter Martinsson, and Johan Stennek. The authors would also like to thank the seminar participants at the University of Gothenburg and City University of Hong Kong.
Citation
Yang, X., Qin, P. and Xu, J. (2016), "Positional concern, gender, and household expenditures: a case study in Yunnan province", China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 572-594. https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-07-2015-0076
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited