Impact of Consumption on Human welfare: A Challenge faced by Conventional Economics

Theories of conventional economics say that the increase in consumption can increase the welfare (both objective welfare and subjective welfare) of individuals, but recent studies, which have been done by the economists of happiness found the opposite results. In fact, studies in this area show that if people spend their money on experiential purchases, they will get more subjective welfare. But the categorization of costs based on experiential and material leads to a lack of attention to the main motive for the consumption. In order to avoid this problem, in this paper, the expenditures of people is divided into six different groups based on their motivation and then, with the help of observations and data obtained from the completion of the questionnaires by residents over 20 years of age living in Tehran and by using one sample T-test and multivariate regression in SPSS22 software, the effect of the consumption on the welfare of individuals has been studied empirically. The results of this research show that, firstly, the mere use of subjective or objective indicators of welfare alone cannot give adequate insight into the state of the society, because it is possible that under the influence of some variables, these indicators diverge. Secondly, contrary to the beliefs of some economists that more consumption is essential for increasing the welfare of the society, all forms of consumption not only cannot increase the subjective welfare of individuals but also maybe incapable of satisfying the basic needs of individuals. Therefore, it seems that more research is needed in this area.