Psychological Mechanisms Underlying Exquisite Poverty and Consumption Intentions among Generation Z: The Roles of Scarcity Mindset, Social Comparison, Narcissism, and Psychological Ownership

In recent years, the phenomenon of "exquisite poverty" has become prevalent among the younger generation, reflecting the diversity of contemporary social values."Exquisitely poor" refers to people with high consumption demands but limited financial resources, who pursue a tasteful lifestyle but cannot splurge like the wealthy.The aim of this study is to explore the consumption behavioral intentions and psychological motivations of Generation Z in the social media environment.In this study, we propose a theoretical model; we believe that the scarcity mindset of social attention will trigger social comparison behavior.Narcissistic admiration plays a mediating role.Psychological ownership also has a mediating effect between social comparison and behavioral intention.We collected 323 valid samples, including 284 samples from college students.The results of our study show that narcissistic admiration partially mediates between scarcity mindset and social comparison, while psychological ownership fully mediates between social comparison and behavioral intention.Overall, the aim of this study is to make up for the lack of integrated research on social media and the exquisite poverty phenomenon in the existing literature.The results not only provide theoretical contributions but also offer a new perspective for understanding the consumption behavior of the younger generation.