Soña Lemrová, Eva Reiterová, Renata Fatenová, Karel Lemr, Thomas Li-Ping Tang
In this study, we develop a theoretical modelof monetary intelligence (MI), explore the extent to whichindividuals’ meaning of money is related to the pursuit ofmaterialistic purposes, and test our model using the wholesample and across college major and gender. We select the15-item love of money (LOM) construct—Factors Good,Evil (Affective), Budget (Behavioral), Achievement, andPower (Cognitive)—from the Money Ethic Scale andFactors Success and Centrality and two indicators—fromthe Materialism Scale. Based on our data collected from330 university students in Czech Republic, we provide thefollowing findings. First, ourformativemodels are superiorto ourreflectivemodels. Second, for thereflectivemodel,money represents Power, Good, Achievement, and notEvil, in the context of materialism. Ourformativemodelsuggests that those who pursuit materialism cherishAchievement (vanity) but Budget their money poorly.Third, multi-group analyses illustrate that humanities stu-dents (62.4 % female) consider money as Evil and Budgettheir money poorly, while those in natural sciences (37.6 %female) do not. Further, men are obsessed with Achieve-ment, whereas women do not Budget their money properly,suggesting reflective temptation for males and impulsivetemptation for females. Our novel discoveries shed newlights on the relationships between LOM and materialismand offer practical implications to the field of consumerbehavior and business ethics