An Empirical Study of Mental Accounts: Evidence from Elementary School Teachers in Changhua County

• Main Author: 蔡祐仁
• Other Authors: 郭志安
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/18833397479870020269

碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 商業教育學系 === 99 === Thaler (1985) argues that individuals divide their current and future assets into separate mental accounts and assign different levels of utility to each account. Mental accounting refers to the tendency of humans to make decisions based on mental categories. In this paper, we analyze teacher’s financial behaviors by taking the concept of mental accounting into consideration. First, we determine teacher’s attitude toward risk. Second, we divide teacher’s total wealth into education account, money-making account, and retirement account. Finally, we analyze the fund allocation, investment tendency, and tolerable loss ratio among the three mental accounts. We find that there have no significant relationships between teachers’ attitude towards risk and their backgrounds. In contract, in each mental account, there are significant relationships between teachers’ backgrounds and the fund allocation, investment tendency, and tolerable loss ratio. Its means that each mental account is associated with a goal and each goal has a specific threshold level.