Human Values and Life Satisfaction: Moderating Effects of Culture and Age

Abstract

Extant literatures have illustrated that human values influence consumers’ product preference and subsequently their choices. This article aims to investigate the relationship between human values and overall life satisfaction across consumer segments using the 2010–2014 World Value Survey (WVS) wave 6 data, which comprises of 85,512 respondents residing in 56 countries around the world. With available detailed socio-demographic data, a series of ordinal logistic models are estimated. Results show significant relationships between human values and overall level of life satisfaction. Interestingly, these relationships are moderated both cultural regions and age. Findings do not only support the notion of cultural-level values, but also suggest that rational individuals dynamically shift their value priorities as they age to ensure a higher level of overall life satisfaction. Consequently, global marketers should dynamically align their product offering’s benefits and promotions with the values that its target market seeks. Other implications for marketing to consumers residing in different cultural regions and belonging to different age groups are also discussed.

Keywords:

• Life satisfaction
• human values
• goals
• value priorities
• ageing consumers
• cultural regions

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the editor and reviewers for their constructive comments which had significantly enhanced the contributions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

There is no potential conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Thammasat Business School.