“The Robustness of Mental Accounting Across 21 Countries,” an international collaborative study co-authored by Professor Zong Jichuan and Associate Professor Zhu Xinxin of the School of Finance at Dongbei University of Finance and Economics (DUFE), has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR), a leading international journal in consumer behavior and marketing.

The paper emerges from a large-scale international project in the behavioral sciences, launched and coordinated by the Behavioral Decision Sciences Laboratory at the University of Padua in Italy, which brought together more than one hundred scholars from over 60 universities and research institutions in more than 20 countries and regions. Together with Associate Professor Peiran Jiao of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, Zong and Zhu of the DUFE School of Finance were responsible for organizing and implementing the study in China, bringing the Chinese sample into the data landscape of this global comparison.

The project centers on mental accounting, a classic theory in behavioral economics. Running standardized experiments in parallel across countries worldwide, the team carried out the first large-scale test of how reliably the theory replicates and how far it travels across cultures. Mental accounting effects, they found, hold up in the era of digital payment, though their strength differs somewhat between countries at different levels of economic development. The findings offer new empirical evidence on how consumers make financial decisions in different cultural settings, and give financial practitioners and policymakers a basis for tailoring interventions to local cultural and economic conditions, from helping consumers manage debt and credit to helping them spot fraudulent financial practices.

International research collaboration has been a priority for the School of Finance in recent years. The School regularly hosts high-level international conferences and workshops, and encourages its faculty to join international projects, work with scholars abroad, and publish in top international journals. This paper marks a new chapter in those efforts and offers valuable experience for more ambitious collaborations to come. Building on it, the School will deepen substantive partnerships with leading universities and research institutions overseas and continue to strengthen its research.

Founded in 1974 and published by Oxford University Press, the Journal of Consumer Research is widely regarded as the leading journal in consumer behavior research. It appears on both the UTD24 and FT50 lists of top international journals and carries broad influence across behavioral science, marketing, and behavioral finance.

Written by: Zhu Xinxin

Source: School of Finance