Parental Mediation on Children’s TV Advertising Exposure and Children’s Materialism and Purchase Requests

Abstract

This correlational study investigated parental mediation on children’s exposureto TV advertising and their children’s materialistic attitudes. It also examined the correlations between parental mediation and children’s requests to purchase merchandise. A dyadic survey of 250 parents and survey (aged 7-12) was conductedin early 2011 among urban middle income households in Cebu City, Philippines.Adopting the materialism measures of Buijzen and Valkenburg (2005) the resultsindicate that the children seem equivocal on “having a lot of money” and “owninga lot of things,” and shun being “able to buy things that cost a lot of money.”However, 70% have asked their parents to buy them merchandise seen advertisedon TV. Also adopting the parental mediation scale of Buijzen and Valkenburg(2005), the results show that parents guide their children about the value andcommercial intent of advertising but demonstrate more frequent mediation through “active” mediation behaviors than the “restrictive” mediation behaviors.The study concludes a negative correlation, albeit weak, between parents’ TVadvertising mediation and children’s attitudes on materialism, but none in thechildren’s request for merchandise advertised on TV.Keywords: Social sciences, TV advertising, parental TV mediation, factor analysis,correlational study, Philippines