Adolescents’ use of influence tactics with parents in family travel decision making: A cross-societal comparison in Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT

We aim to present a cross-societal comparison of the influence tactics that adolescents use with their parents in family travel decisions by investigating 762 usable responses of senior high school students across four Eastern Europe societies (Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Slovakia). Through multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA), adolescent influence behavior emerges in a refined and validated model of four subscales reflecting bargaining, persuasion, emotional, and request strategies. These subscales indicate the measurement invariance of adolescent influence behavior across societies. Our findings show significant between-society differences for all four dimensions of adolescents’ influence tactics with their parents. Furthermore, respondents from all four societies have similar priorities of choosing their influence tactics, as reported in recent studies on family purchase decisions. We also found that respondents from the non-post-Soviet cluster (NPSC) are more likely to apply various influence tactics than their counterparts from the post-Soviet cluster (PSC). We conclude with a discussion of these differences and why they may have occurred.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescent influence tactics with parents
• Cross-societal comparison
• Eastern Europe
• Family travel decisions
• Measurement invariance

Highlights

Our findings show significant between-society differences for all four dimensions of adolescents’ influence tactics with their parents across four Eastern Europe. Furthermore, respondents from all societies have similar priorities of choosing their influence tactics, as reported in recent studies on family purchase decisions. We also found that respondents from the non-post-Soviet cluster (NPSC) are more likely to apply various influence tactics than their counterparts from the post-Soviet cluster (PSC). Instead of cultural values alone, economic development, modernization, and other relevant socioeconomic resources explain the potential variance of societal evolution for Eastern European studies.

Additional information

Funding

This article is based on the corresponding author’s project grant from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST 106-2410-H-030-072) for the Commonwealth Research Program (http://battle7447.wixsite.com/crp-taiwan).