The Loneliness Economy: Structural Fragility in Older Adults' Vulnerability to Wellness-Product Scams in China

In China, media reports have long attributed older adults' susceptibility to their gullibility or poor health literacy. This paper argues that such phenomena should be better understood through a framework of "loneliness economy", which builds on routine activity theory, structural accounts of loneliness, critical gerontology, and research on intergenerational support erosion. Using a mixed-method approach, this paper conducts a survey on 53 older adults and five in-depth interviews conducted in urban China. Though the survey sample was overall emotionally well supported and highly vigilant toward wellness product marketing, the minority of respondents living alone or staying in infrequent contact with their children shows higher emotional receptivity toward attentive salespersons. Interviews further reveal that their loneliness is less a constant trait but more a structural fragility due to narrow support systems and infrequent conduct with younger family members. These findings imply that vulnerability to wellness scams is not a definite trait of "lonely older adults," but a condition that leads to susceptibility as support structures thin out. In addition, older adults themselves also view scam victims as gullible and illiterate, which internalizes an ageist narrative and conceals the structural causes of inadequate social support identified by this paper.