Perceptions of Busy and Leisurely Lifestyles and How They Shape Implications of Status, Human Capital, and Scarcity

Indianapolis, IN

The objective of this current research is to investigate if college students and college-aged people perceive someone with a busy lifestyle who lacks leisure time to have significantly more desirable traits than someone with a leisurely lifestyle; specifically, this research aimed to investigate status, human capital, and scarcity in a busy versus leisurely lifestyle. The results of this research indicated no significance in the difference between a busy and leisurely lifestyle pertaining to status, but did indicate significance in the perception of human capital and scarcity between a busy and leisurely lifestyle. These perceptions of a busy lifestyle could impact people’s desires to appear busy, therefore impacting their conspicuous consumption of products that demonstrate this lifestyle. Shifting the desire from products that convey a luxurious lifestyle to products that convey a busy lifestyle, this cultural phenomenon may be pushing people to present themselves as if they do not have leisure time.