Antecedence of Materialism

Abstract

Materialism has becoming a major problem in the world. Materialistic consumers consume more and unnecessary things. Overconsumption is one of the major threats to the future of human survival. Hence, the intention of this research is to identify the antecedents of materialism in Sri Lankan context. Through the Literature review, the antecedents of materialism was identified as; depression, anxiety, self esteem, and stress. Positivist approach with deductive reasoning was used in this study. Individual adult person was taken as the unit of study of this research and this is a single cross sectional study. Sample of 450 adults was selected according to judgmental sampling technique representing nine provinces in Sri Lanka. Structured questionnaire was used as the data collection tool. Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyze the data. self esteem, depression, and stress significantly affect materialism. Self esteem and depression, negatively affect the materialism while “stress” positively affect the materialism