Abstract:

Materialism refers to a value that emphasizes the importance of material possessions. Current article reviewed the antecedents, measures and interventions about adolescents’ materialism. First, previous research has shown that adolescents’ materialism is mainly influenced by the factors from three sources: family, peer, and mass media. Second, the Youth Materialism Scale, the Material Value Scale for children and the Consumer Involvement are three self-report scales that are widely used in the surveys related to adolescents’ materialism. Moreover, collage, imagination as well as social model video are popular paradigms in the experiments of adolescents’ materialism. Third, family, school, media and government play different roles in intervening adolescents’ materialism. Finally, this review outlined some directions for future research: a) examining the environmental effects on the formation and development of adolescents’ materialism; b) exploring adolescents’ materialism under the Chinese context.

Key words: materialism, adolescent, family, peer, media, measure, intervention