Factors That Affect Student's Conservation Habits

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“As consumers become wealthier, their spending patterns change, sometimes dramatically” (Zumbrun, 2015). Josh Zumbrun(2015) did an online survey on how the rich and poor spend and earn their money. From his results, he found out that richer families spend more on entertainment, which is an indicator of the children being less likely to be deprived of their needs; whether in academics or in leisure. This is, of course, if we don’t count saving habits in their genetics. Although the rich spend more on entertainment, Zumbrun also found out that they spend even greater on insurance or the like. The less economically stable contribute only 1.4% of their fund, which is significantly less.

Zumbrun’s study explicitly concluded that richer families thought of financial situations for the future more than that of the less economically stable. From Zumbrun’s results, the families born in the middle class spent more on transportation and food than that of the richer classes and spent less on insurances. This could go against the researcher’s ideal of children from the middle class being more open to saving compared to other classes as concluded from Furnham’s study. But since Zumbrun did the survey on families in general and not children, the assumption is not invalidated. Furnham’s focused on the subjects’ age and sex more than their social class. He also mentioned that taking into account children’s different social classes is difficult to deal with as older children’s tendency to do shopping more often than younger children do has to be considered.

Furnham’s research also cited a study Abramovitch, Freedman and Pliner (1991) did on children’s experience on money. In their experiment, children aged 6, 8 and 10(some were regularly given an allowance, some weren’t) were given $4; in cash or in credit card. They were to spend it in a toy store and were allowed to take home any unspent money. In the end, the children who were not given an allowance spent more compared to those who were. “These results suggest that receiving an allowance may facilitate the development of monetary competence” (Furnham, 1998, p 679). A clear link between the Furnham and Abramovitch’s studies is youth’s awareness on spending. This is assuming that other variables that could very well affect their difference in results, such as the country and location, are ignored.

A different study conducted by Haiyang Chen and Ronald Volpe supports one of the researcher’s initial claims. “The ability to manage personal finances has become increasingly important in today’s world” (Chen and Volpe, 1998, p 1). Chen and Volpe’s research focused mainly on the major facets of personal finance. The survey had questions on savings, borrowing, insurance, investments and general knowledge. Their research took into account the respective majors the college students were taking up in college. The results of the study show that participants from different courses have different levels of knowledge in finance. To summarize, graduate students are more knowledgeable than the undergraduates and seniors are more knowledgeable that the juniors. This suggests that experience and age does matter in figuring the budget allotment of different age groups. But these results are only valid only if we also take into consideration the fact that this study stated participants’ educational background has a significant impact of their knowledge on finance. This could very well justify Furnham’s study’s limitation due to age.

Most of the studies mentioned so far had age as a common aspect. Furnham’s and Ambramovitch’s had close age groups and focused on youth’s budgeting. Both Furnham and Zumbrun’s study delved in differences in social classes but Zumbrun talked about families in general unlike Furnham did with children. Zumbrun concluded that richer families are more inclined to invest for the future. Furnham said the same thing, but exclusive to women. Chen’s study had education as an additional variable and it explained that experience can also bring about good budgeting knowledge.

If we recall in one of Ambramovitch’s results, as Furnham suggested, having an allowance could be a good way build the financial competence among children. Giving an allowance is one of the first and best ways to teach kids about managing their money (McKay, 2015). This tells that having a background in saving and a child’s lifestyle growing up are factors to their spending habits as they start becoming independent. Back to our initial topic, people should start conserving while they are young so they can witness how the world is changing with an open mind. It is good to pick up conservation habits now so they can be there until the future. This could go parallel with Chen and Volpe’s study regarding money budgeting experience.

Thus, the researcher could conclude from the aforementioned chosen studies that a person’s standard of living, money allotment as they’re growing and direct influence could affect how they budget their money for now or for the future. Direct influence from parents is being the greatest aspect as the standard of living is greatly dependent on their gross income. Also, how their parents introduced budget allotment as they’re growing and what they witnessed growing up counts as a great factor. Growing up with an allowance is also the simplest form of experience a student can get. What is now left for the researcher to cross-check is how these spending factors go in parallel with the young person’s conservation schemes. The direct relationship these factors have with said person’s modes of conservation is yet to be analyzed, as this was not addressed in the earlier studies reviewed. Through this analysis, it is then easy to trace how every factor affects conservation.

References

Online Books:

Gobaisi, A.D.(2004). Part I: Basic Concepts of Sustainability. In A. D. Gobaisi, Integrated Power And Desalination Plants (pp. 551-605). Available from: http://www.ibrarian .net/navon/paper/Part_I__BASIC_CONCEPTS_OF_SUSTAINABILITY.pdf?paperid=

1305716.

Schumacher, E.F.(1973). In Chapter 1 The Problem of Production. Small is beautiful. Originally Published: London: Blond and Briggs. Available from https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnx0ZX h0YW5kd3JpdGV8Z3g6NjFhNjJkNGUxZmI4MTI5

Soubbotina, T. P. (2004). In Chapter 10 Urban Air Pollution. Beyond Economic Growth (Second ed., WBI Learning Resources Series). Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFp bnx0ZXh0YW5kd3JpdGV8Z3g6NjdmOTNkNzVkNWI2ZGExNQ