Materialists perceive their high socioeconomic status as justice: associations with increased political participation

Zhao, Z, Zhao, Q, Tao, S and Du, W ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5115-7214, 2025. Materialists perceive their high socioeconomic status as justice: associations with increased political participation. PLOS One, 20 (5): e0324680. ISSN 1932-6203

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Abstract

Existing research has not reached a consensus on the relationship between subjective socioeconomic status (SSS) and political participation. Thus, this study investigated the psychological variables influencing the relationship between SSS and political participation. Specifically, it explored the mediating role of perceived social justice and the moderating role of materialism value. A sample of 1306 college students was conducted with the MacArthur Scale of SSS, the System Justification Scale, the Material Value Scale, and the Political Participation Behavior Scale. The results showed that: (1) There was a significant positive correlation between SSS, perceived social justice and political participation; materialism value shows a significant negative correlation with SSS, perceived social justice, and political participation. (2) Perceived social justice played a mediating role in the effect of SSS on political participation. (3) Materialism value moderated the relationship between SSS and perceived social justice. Under high materialism value, perceived social justice increases with SSS; however, under low materialism value, this effect is no longer significant. The study enriches our understanding of the underlying psychological mechanisms and marginal effects in the relationship between SSS and political participation.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	PLOS One
Creators:	Zhao, Z., Zhao, Q., Tao, S. and Du, W.
Publisher:	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date:	2 June 2025
Volume:	20
Number:	5
ISSN:	1932-6203
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1371/journal.pone.0324680 DOI 2448621 Other
Rights:	© 2025 Zhao et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Laura Borcherds
Date Added:	05 Jun 2025 07:54
Last Modified:	05 Jun 2025 07:54
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/53693

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