Self-Control and Consumption Behaviors: An Empirical Investigation of Taiwanese Household

There is a growing body of literature that has addressed the issue of self-control. However, little evidence has been shown based on the real-world data. To bridge the gap of the previous studies, this paper attempts to investigate the associations between self-control and consumption behavior of households. Several special features may set our study apart from the previous literature. First, unlike the evidence provided from experiment research, we utilized the Survey of Family Income and Expenditure in Taiwan to construct a balanced panel data set from 1986 to 2006 for cohort analysis. Second, we estimate the models not only based on the total expenditure of whole operators, but also for several detail categories of consumption items. These include drink expenditure, soft drink expenditure, alcohol drink expenditure, tobacco expenditure, clothing expenditure, travel expenditure and entertainment expenditure. In so doing, we are able to examine the extent to which self-control may differ for different consumption behaviors of households in Taiwan. Additionally, we divide operator into male and female, looking over whether their total expenditure appear the self-control problems, and then subdivide the consumption project into such seven items of expenditure as beverage total expenditure, etc., afterwards, looking over the self-control problems separately. esults of the empirical analysis show that operators, in general, suffer by the self-control problems on consumption behaviors such as total expenditure, drink expenditure, soft drink expenditure, clothing expenditure, travel expenditure and entertainment expenditure. However, male operators are apt to have self-control problems on such consumption behaviors as total expenditure, drink expenditure, soft drink expenditure, alcohol expenditure, clothing expenditure, travel expenditure and entertainment expenditure; compare to male, female operators are apt to have self-control problems only on such consumption behaviors as total expenditure and clothing expenditure. In contrast, results show that female operators tend to have more ability of self-control than male. This finding may be resulted in differences in genders or the social treatment and expectation to cause distinct self-control factors.