EXPRESS: Favorite Possessions Protect Subjective Wellbeing under Income Inequality

Rising income inequality is taking a toll on people’s subjective wellbeing (SWB), and many commentators have implicated the role of material possessions, and thereby marketing, in this regard. Making a more nuanced argument, the present research proposes that certain material possessions – namely, favorite possessions – can mitigate the detrimental psychological effect of income inequality on SWB. In support of this proposition, experimental data from nine countries (N=3,687) and social media posts from 138 countries (N=31,332) converge to show that, while SWB generally declines as income inequality increases, encouraging consumers to attend to their favorite possessions can mitigate the negative effect of inequality on SWB. This is because attending to favorite possessions reduces consumers’ tendency to make social comparisons related to material resources and wealth, which otherwise arise when income inequality is high. Consequently, even when they perceive high income inequality, consumers feel less deprived relative to others, thereby buffering their SWB. These findings have meaningful consumer welfare implications. In particular, one way consumers can feel happier with their quality of life in an unequal society is to avoid comparing their material wealth to that of others and instead attend to the material possessions that are most special to them.