Sex, financial hardship and locus of control: an empirical study of attitudes towards money among Singaporean Chinese

This study examines the effects of (1) gender, (2) financial hardship, and (3) locus of control (LOC), on peopleʹs money attitudes. The contributions of our study are two-fold. First, while research in the area of money attitudes has burgeoned recently, relatively few studies have been conducted in the context of Asia. Thus, our study fills this void in the literature by examining peopleʹs money attitudes in Singapore. Second, our study extends Lim and Teoʹs study (Lim & Teo, 1997) on sex, money and financial hardship, by focusing on the money attitudes of working adults, and by examining how LOC influences money attitudes. Respondents comprised 305 ethnic Chinese working adults. Logistic regression analysis results suggest that men were more concerned about the power and anxiety dimensions, while women were more concerned about the budget, retention and evaluation dimensions of money attitudes. Those who had experienced financial hardship were more likely to view money as a source of power and less likely to be non-generous (i.e. more likely to be generous). Internals tended to budget their money, while externals tended to view money as a source of power, use money as a tool for evaluation and be more non-generous (i.e. less generous).