The effect of social comparison on debt taking: Experimental evidence

IF 3.9 2区经济学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance Pub Date : 2025-12-01 Epub Date: 2025-09-23 DOI:10.1016/j.jbef.2025.101111

Antonia Grohmann , Melanie Koch

引用次数: 0

Abstract

A number of studies show a link between social comparison and high levels of household debt. However, the exact underlying mechanisms are not yet well understood. In this paper, we disentangle two mechanisms in a lab experiment to study the effects of social image concerns and peer information on debt-financed consumption choices. We find that having to announce their consumption decisions publicly does not make participants more likely to take on debt. However, in an exploratory analysis, we uncover that it makes them more likely to buy a lower quality product than they can afford. We find no significant effects for information about other participants consumption on choices.

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社会比较对债务承担的影响：实验证据

许多研究表明，社会攀比与高水平的家庭债务之间存在联系。然而，确切的潜在机制还没有被很好地理解。在本文中，我们在实验室实验中理清了社会形象关注和同伴信息对债务融资消费选择的影响机制。我们发现，不得不公开宣布他们的消费决定并不会使参与者更有可能承担债务。然而，在一项探索性分析中，我们发现，这使他们更有可能购买比他们负担得起的低质量的产品。我们发现其他参与者的消费信息对选择没有显著影响。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance BUSINESS, FINANCE-

CiteScore

13.20

自引率

6.10%

发文量

审稿时长

69 days

期刊介绍： Behavioral and Experimental Finance represent lenses and approaches through which we can view financial decision-making. The aim of the journal is to publish high quality research in all fields of finance, where such research is carried out with a behavioral perspective and / or is carried out via experimental methods. It is open to but not limited to papers which cover investigations of biases, the role of various neurological markers in financial decision making, national and organizational culture as it impacts financial decision making, sentiment and asset pricing, the design and implementation of experiments to investigate financial decision making and trading, methodological experiments, and natural experiments. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance welcomes full-length and short letter papers in the area of behavioral finance and experimental finance. The focus is on rapid dissemination of high-impact research in these areas.