Agata Gąsiorowska Wrocław University of Technology

1. Why We Asses Our Financial Situation As Good Or Bad? Income And Money Attitudes Influence On Subjective Financial Situation Assessment • Agata Gąsiorowska • Wrocław University of Technology 1

2. “Rich or poor is a state of mind. People may be financially poor but psychologically rich and vice versa”(Tang, Luna-Arocas, Sutarso, Tang, 2004, p.119) 2

3. Factors influencing money satisfaction • The relative standards model - people evaluate their success in each domain on the base of standards such as social comparisons, desires, and comparisons with the past (Solberg et al., 2002) • People’s satisfaction with their income and material goods depends on the discrepancies between what they possess and what they desire • The size of such a discrepancy might be related to trait materialism, and to money attitudes (Shafer, 2000; Gąsiorowska, 2003). 3

4. Measurement of Money Attitudes • Three general categories of scales used for estimation of people’s attitudes or beliefs about money • based on money utility or marginal utility - e.g. Brandstätter, Brandstätter, 1996 • “idiosyncratic” scales - e.g. Wernimont, Fitzpatrick, 1972; Prince, 1993; Rubinstein, 1981 • “real” scales - Money Attitude Scale by Yamauchi and Templer (1982), Money Beliefs and Behaviour Scale by Furnham (1984) and Money Ethic Scale by Tang (1992) • Two original Polish scales: Attitudes Towards Money Scale (Wąsowicz-Kiryło 2008, Wąsowicz-Kiryło, Wiśniewska, 2005) and SPP Money Attitudes Questionnaire (Gąsiorowska, 2003, 2008). 4

5. SPP Money Attitudes Questionnaire • Satisfactory internal validity and reliability, better adjusted to Polish conditions than other money attitudes scales, like MAS or MES • Dimensions: • Control and planning • Power • Anxiety • Debt aversion • Occasion seeking • Money as evil • Cash 5

6. Money attitudes and money satisfaction - previous studies • Tang, Luna-Arocas, Sutarso, Tang, 2004 • the love of money as moderator of relationship between income and pay satisfaction • the love of money is positively related to income and to pay satisfaction. • Tang, Tang, Homaifar, 2006 • income significantly increased the importance of the love of money for part of sample • income was related to pay satisfaction, love of money was not related to pay satisfaction. • Tang, Chiu, 2003 • negative relations between the love of money and pay satisfaction and between income and the love of money • Wilhelm, Varcoe and Huebner Fridrich, 1993 • the influence of the objective indicators on financial well-being not mediated by money beliefs, • money attitudes contribute in predicting assessment of financial satisfaction 6

7. Hypotheses • H1. Subjective evaluation of financial situation depends on objective income level and on money attitudes • H2: Gender moderates the relation between income and subjective evaluation of financial situation. • H3. Gender moderates the relation between money attitudes and subjective evaluation of financial situation. 7

8. Participants & Procedure 8

9. Results - preliminary study control and planning β=0.22 β=0.27 β=0.13 R2=0.06 R2=0.13 anxiety financial situation β=-0.15 β=-0.14 β=-0.15 power women: χ2/df=1.021, RMSEA=0.013, TLI=0.991, CFI=0.994; 9 men: χ2/df=1.308, RMSEA=0.037, TLI=0.949, CFI=0.967

10. Results - secondary study - Women R2=0.25 Income financial situation β=0.41 β=0.15 β=0.12 control and planning β=-0.25 β=-16 anxiety 10 χ2/df=0.709, RMSEA<0.001, TLI=1.082, CFI=1

11. Results - secondary study - Women R2=0.22 Income financial situation β=0 control and planning β=0 anxiety 11 χ2/df=0.882, RMSEA<0.001, TLI=1.033, CFI=1

12. Results - secondary study - Women R2=0.10 Income financial situation β=0 control and planning anxiety 12 χ2/df=1.729, RMSEA=0.075, TLI=0.794, CFI=0.868

13. Results - secondary study - WomenMediation analyses Income financial situation control and planning p=0.156 anxiety p=0.034 13

14. Results - secondary study - Men R2=0.50 Income β=0.53 financial situation β=0.40 control and planning β=-0.11 anxiety β=-0.17 β=-0.13 occasion seeking β=-0.20 power 14 debt aversion χ2/df=0.975, RMSEA<0.001, TLI=1.008 CFI=1

15. Results - secondary study - Men R2=0.25 Income financial situation β=0 control and planning Β=0 anxiety Β=0 β=0 occasion seeking β=0 power 15 debt aversion χ2/df=1.917, RMSEA=0.104, TLI=0.718 CFI=0.789

16. Results - secondary study - Men R2=0.20 Income β=0 financial situation control and planning anxiety occasion seeking power 16 debt aversion χ2/df=2.609, RMSEA=0.138, TLI=0.506, CFI=0.684

17. Conclusions (1) • Subjective evaluation of financial situation depends not only on objective income level, but also on money attitudes • Gender does not moderate the influence of income level on money satisfaction • Contribution made by money beliefs to predict financial progress is different for men and women 17

18. Conclusion (2) • For women • The effect of income on financial satisfaction is definitely stronger than effect of money attitudes • Anxiety connected with money is mediating the effect of income on financial satisfaction • High income reduces negative emotions and fear in the situation connected with money, which in turn increases the level of satisfaction • For men • the effect of money attitudes is primarily additive • income together with money attitudes explains financial satisfaction • It is very probable, that when females are assessing their financial situation, they take into consideration also the income their spouse/partner, but when males do so, they concentrate on their own situation, as they are socially perceived as “head of family” and breadwinners. 18