Abstract:
The study examined the factors that influence Ghanaians level of materialism. The study adopted the quantitative research design relying questionnaire as the main instruments for data collection. The target respondents were students from the University of Cape Coast. The simple random sampling technique was adopted to sample 383 respondents out of which 300 participated by responding to the questionnaires. The sample size of 383 was determined using the Cochran’s formula which is considered especially appropriate in situations with large populations. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis as well as regression analysis. The variables that were identified in literature to influence materialism include power prestige dimension, retention time dimension, distrust dimension and anxiety dimension.
Among these four variables the descriptive analyses showed that retention time dimension had the highest grand mean score of 5.20 which was followed by distrust dimension with a mean score of 3.92. the variable with the least mean score was power prestige dimension which had a mean score of 2.80.
The correlation analysis showed that there was positive relationship between all the four independent variables and materialism in Ghana. However, the relationship between distrust dimension and materialism and anxiety dimension and materialism were the two that were statistically significant at 1% significance level. The other two variable power prestige dimension and retention time dimension were statistically insignificant. The regression analysis showed that only anxiety dimension and distrust dimension were significant determinants of materialism in Ghana. Power prestige and retention time dimension were statistically insignificant.
