Research on the Issue of the Individual Behavior and Social Atmosphere of “Keeping-Up with the Joneses” and Rural Households’ Marriage Expenditure: An Analysis Based on Buck’s Survey Data of Chinese Farmers during 1929-1933

Marriage expenditure behavior is not only an economic behavior, but also with its social meaning, which can be easily affected by mind of rivalry. Based on Buck’s survey data of Chinese farmers during 1929-1933, this paper has analyzed the connection between the behavior of “keeping-up with the Joneses” and mind of rivalry, as well as the relationship between individual behavior and social atmosphere of “keeping-up with the Joneses”. Through in-novatively constructing the measurable index of the behavior of “keeping-up with the Joneses”, this paper has also quantitatively analyzed the impact of income gap and credit availability on the atmosphere of “keeping-up with the Joneses”, and its effect on pushing up the marriage expenditure. The empirical results indicate that economic factors, such as income gap and credit availability, will have significant influence on the atmosphere of “keeping-up with the Joneses”. With large income gap and deficient financing channels, rural households will decrease the degree of their individual behavior of “keeping-up with the Joneses”, which will further weaken the whole social atmosphere of “keeping-up with the Joneses”; otherwise, with small income gap and sufficient financing channels, the social atmosphere will be streng-thened. At the same time, through forming social pressure, individual mind of rivalry may also be strengthened, pushing up the final marriage expenditure.


Introduction
Marriage expenditure refers to various forms of investment in the marriage process. It is not only an economic behavior affected by income, but also an important factor of building and maintaining marriage relationship affected by social factors [1]. The mind of rivalry is an important factor affecting marriage expenditure [2], which will push up rural households' marriage expenditure to a higher level under the relatively closed rural communities [3]. The mind of rivalry among rural households will lead to individual behavior of "keeping-up with the Joneses": the stronger the psychological motivation, the stronger the behavior, which means that lower-income groups will refer to the consumption situation of higher-income groups, and in order to catch up with the marriage expenditure of higher-income groups, they would like to exceed their income capacity through advancing or borrowing [4] [5] [6]; the aggregation of individual behavior of "keeping-up with the Joneses" tends to form the social atmosphere of "keeping up with the Joneses", which will further strengthen the individual mind of rivalry through forming social pressures, then pushing up the marriage expenditure.
However, the ability of lower-income groups to catch up with marriage expenditure of higher-income groups in rural area is constrained by the income gap and credit availability. Relevant research suggests that the income gap has an inhibitory effect on consumption [7] [8] that is, with the income gap widening, rural households will continuously adjust their assessment of their ability to catch up with higher-income groups, which will have an inhibitory effect on excessive marriage consumption. At the same time, consumer finance plays a role in promoting consumption: the increasing borrowing will give rural households more confidence to keep up with the Joneses through the increase of temporary wealth, as well as to enhance the possibility of transforming the mind of rivalry to real behavior [9]. Therefore, only the real behavior of "keeping-up with the Joneses" can be observed, which can reflect the individual mind of rivalry. With the popularization of the behavior of "keeping-up with the Joneses", the social atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses" will be formed under social pressure, strengthening the individual mind of rivalry and then pushing up the final marriage expenditure.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the economic conditions of rural society were generally poor, but the phenomenon of high marriage expenditure was prevalent [10], such conflict indicating that the behavior of "keeping-up with the Joneses" was more obvious in terms of marriage expenditure than other consumption ex- constructed the mechanism about how the mind of rivalry affects the behavior of "keeping-up with the Joneses", the individual behavior contribute to social atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses", the social atmosphere strengthen the individual mind of rivalry, and then affect the marriage expenditure. At the same time, this paper has also analyzed the impact of income gap and credit availability on the atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses", and its effect on pushing up the marriage expenditure.

Quantification of "Keeping-Up with the Joneses" Index
This paper defines the behavior of "keeping-up with the Joneses" as the process that the lower-income consumers try to catch up with the higher-income consumers' consumption level in order to gain identity and sense of class belonging, which is particularly evident in marriage expenditure, even the lower-income rural households would like to spend approximate or more in marriage.
According to the definition, this paper firstly constructs the index i C to measure individual behavior of "keeping-up with the Joneses", as shown in formula (1): "keeping-up with the Joneses", the larger C , the higher the regional degree; when 0 C < , the region does not form the obvious atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses", the smaller C , the lower the regional degree.

Data Source
The research data comes from Buck's survey data of Chinese farmers during  Table 1.

Model Construction
This paper took two steps. Firstly, it explored the influence of economic factors like income gap and credit availability on the atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses", and then analyzed the impact of such atmosphere on the marriage expenditure regionally. Table 2 below has shown variable description and descriptive statistical analysis in following models.

Com
Atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses"

The Influence Model of Economic Factors on the Atmosphere of "Keeping-Up with the Joneses"
To analyze the influence of income gap and credit availability on the atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses", this paper established two kinds of regression models based on the calculation of the regional degree of "keeping-up with the Joneses". In formula (3) of a linear regression model, the explained variable is the county degree of "keeping-up with the Joneses" in six agricultural regions, the explanatory variables are the income gap and credit availability of each county, and the control variables are regional dummy variables; formula (4) keeps the explanatory variables, but changes the explained variable as the existence of the atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses" in each county, which C represents the county degree of "keeping-up with the Joneses", which is expressed by the mean value of the individual behavior of "keeping-up with the Joneses" (as shown in formula (2) W represents the marriage expenditure, Com represents the atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses", X represent the control variables. Specific variables are described as following: 1) Long-term and Short-term Income Level a) Long-term and short-term income level. Since Buck's data didn't include the specific income information of the farmers, this paper selects the alternative indicators within the available data as much as possible, and finally chooses the 1 The agricultural land area is the proxy variable of the long-term income level of rural households, which will be explained in formula (5); the standard deviation reflects the degree of deviation of the income of rural households in the county, and the larger the standard deviation, the larger the income gap. Open Journal of Social Sciences "agricultural land area 3 " to represent the long-term income level of the rural households. In Buck's survey, the agricultural land area index can reflect the general income level of farmers at that time as agricultural income was the main source of income, can also reflect the level of household assets represented by fixed assets such as farmhouses and houses which could be used as a way for farmers to evaluate their long-term income. At the same time, as marriage expenditure is an infrequent "one-time expenditure", farmers usually tend to achieve it through long-term accumulation, therefore, marriage expenditure depends more on the long-term income level represented by the agricultural land area.
This paper uses "per capita production" to represent the short-term income level 4 . Crop yield can reflect the income status of farmers in the current period to a certain extent, which can be used to measure the short-term income level of farmers, and the per capita production index is more convenient for comparison between farmers with different family sizes.
b) The ability of borrowing and repayment. This paper chooses "borrowing for non-production use" to measure the ability of borrowing and "the number of laborers" to measure the ability of repayment. Firstly, the borrowing for non-production use 5 could reflect the borrowing ability of rural households on the marriage expenditure to a certain extent, the higher the amount of borrowing, the more likely to increase the marriage expenditure; then, because of the fact that at that time the agriculture operation mainly relied on laborers, the more family labor force, the more likely to give confidence for rural households to repay.

The Influence of Economic Factors on the Atmosphere of "Keeping-Up with the Joneses"
The influence of economic factors such as income gap and credit availability on the degree and atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses" is shown in Table   3. In Model 1, the income gap is significant under the 1% significant level, and in Model 2, the income gap and credit availability are significant under the 10% and 1% significant levels respectively, which can be explained to some extent that economic factors have a significant impact on the degree and atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses": with the income gap widening by one unit, the degree and the atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses" will decrease by 3 The agricultural land area includes farmhouse area, cultivated area and so on, and the paper unitizes the unit of the agricultural land area into "hectare". 4 In order to facilitate the comparison between regions, this paper refers to Buck's method of calculating "every number of grains per artificial number" in Land Utilization in China and converts the unit of crop yields into "kilogram per grain".  in rural society, rural households will decrease the degree of their individual behavior of "keeping-up with the Joneses", which will further weaken the regional atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses"; while with the increase of credit availability, rural households will enhance the degree of their individual behavior of "keeping-up with the Joneses", which will further strengthen the regional atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses".
Therefore, it could be concluded that with small income gap and high credit availability, rural households will increase their confidence of catching up with the marriage expenditure of higher-income rural households, thereby enhancing the final degree of "keeping-up with the Joneses"; otherwise, with large income gap and low credit availability, even they have the mind of rivalry, the degree of "keeping-up with the Joneses" will be weaken because of the difficulty of catching up with "target" rural households. which means that the atmosphere will have a positive impact on the marriage expenditure, the stronger the atmosphere, the more marriage expenditure. The result is similar to some related qualitative researches, such as Chen Sirong and Wang Liye both emphasized the influence of such atmosphere on rural marriage expenditure through the field research in some rural areas [2] [3]. But different from those previous studies, this paper has established the connection between individual behavior and social atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses". The social atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses" will push up the marriage expenditure, and the increase of individual marriage expenditure will also further strengthen the social atmosphere, leading to a vicious circle.
Other control variables also have a significant influence on marriage expenditure. The income expectation represented by long-term income level and the income fluctuation represented by short-term income level together have impact on marriage expenditure. When the income level increases, the marriage expenditure will also increase; the borrowing for non-production use could provide a guarantee for rural households to achieve basic marriage expenditure, the higher the borrowing amount, the more likely for them to increase the marriage expenditure; the number of laborers represents the repayment ability of rural households, the more laborers, the more likely to increase current marriage expenditure.
From the specific perspective of six agricultural regions, in addition to the Open Journal of Social Sciences Spring Wheat Region and Southwest Rice Region, in other four agricultural regions, the atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses" have a significant influence on marriage expenditure. It could be explained that because Spring Wheat Region's consumption expenditure is largely depended by the regional economic development, compared with the atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses", economic factors will have more significant influence; Southwest Rice Region has more open social cultural because of better natural conditions, so the mind of rivalry has less impact on rural households, leading to weaker atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses". At the same time, each agricultural region is affected by economic factors such as income, labor, borrowing and credit.

Conclusions
Based on Buck's survey data of Chinese farmers during 1929-1933, this paper has analyzed the connection between the behavior of "keeping-up with the Joneses" and mind of rivalry, as well as the relationship between individual behavior and social atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses", and quantitatively analyzed the impact of income gap and credit availability on the atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses", and its effect on pushing up the marriage expenditure. The empirical results indicate that economic factors like income gap and credit availability will have significant influence on the atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses". With large income gap and deficient financing channels, rural households will decrease the degree of their individual behavior of "keeping-up with the Joneses", which will further weaken the whole social atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses"; otherwise the social atmosphere will be strengthened, and through forming social pressure, individual mind of rivalry may also be strengthened, pushing up the final marriage expenditure.
However, due to the limitations of data, some important indicators such as income in this paper can only be replaced by relevant variables, so the major purpose of this paper is to provide a new method of measuring the atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses" for subsequent researches.
Nowadays, rural society still shows the characteristic of high marriage expenditure, and the atmosphere of "keeping-up with the Joneses" is still an important part of social and cultural factors, which is not beneficial for the construction of rural custom civilization and the modernization of rural society.
Therefore, this paper has put forward the following suggestions: 1) Accelerate rural economic construction, improve the living standards of farmers, change the economic and social status of farmers' self-cognition, improve their sense of self-identity and satisfaction, and finally reduce the possibility of the mind of rivalry; 2) Strengthen rural cultural construction, enrich rural cultural life, improve farmers' cultural quality, then gradually help them get rid of the traditional marriage consumption concepts, and develop a scientific and reasonable consumption concept; 3) Strengthen and improve the construction of relevant laws and regulations to effectively guide and intervene in the unhealthy atmosphere