Sacrificing money for health: Shifts in mental accounts caused by zodiac year beliefs

Yuhao Dai, Qican Wu and Menghan Wang

Finance Research Letters, 2025, vol. 76, issue C

Abstract: This paper uses data from China to investigate the relationship between zodiac year and household healthcare investment. Our findings show that individuals who have entered their zodiac year significantly reduce household healthcare investment; however, no significant impact is observed on the objective health status. Notably, our empirical analysis reveals that the zodiac year affects individuals’ healthcare investments via donation accounts. Traditional beliefs related to zodiac years bringing misfortune may influence individuals to change their mental accounts, prioritizing donations over healthcare investment. These results demonstrate that cultural beliefs can influence investment in healthcare through a shift in mental accounts.

Keywords: Superstition; Zodiac year; Healthcare investment; Donation behavior; Cultural economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612325002193
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:finlet:v:76:y:2025:i:c:s1544612325002193

DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2025.106955

Access Statistics for this article

Finance Research Letters is currently edited by R. Gençay

More articles in Finance Research Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().