1인 가구 시대의 도래에 따른 미래 소비자정책 방향에 대한 고찰

Abstract

This study has been conducted to understand the level of consumption life from the perspective of establishing consumer policies, especially for single-person family, and to analyze demographic and social characteristics and differences among different types of one-person households, thereby suggesting a direction of future consumer policies in this era where single-member family is emerging as a strong trend. To this end, based on the survey results conducted in 2015, overall expenditure of single-person households, their level of experiencing consumer problems, issues related to their consumption life, necessary consumer policies for them, and their consumption life satisfaction level have been analyzed. The results of analysis can be summarized as follows: First, the biggest burden of household expenditure held by one-person households is housing, followed by food and financial costs, which indicates the need to provide more systematic support for these policy objects. Second, the level of experiencing consumer problems by single-member households tend to be higher with food products, delivery service, and eatery services which they use very frequently. Since these items showed not just higher percentage but also higher number of experiencing consumer problems, it looks like the relevant systems need to be improved quickly. Also, women were more likely to experience consumer issues than their male counterparts, and there was a statistically significant differences between men and women in terms of their experiences of consumer problems with food products and delivery markets. These demonstrates the fact that some improvement measures need to be implemented based on the characteristics of one-person households in each individual market. Third, the extent of consumption life issues experienced by one-family households seems bigger in their housing life than in their dietary life. Also, women tend to go through more problems related to cancellation and refund of their transactions, and more problems understanding the consumption information. Also, people with younger ages, and those who live in larger cities, and those who have shorter period of one-person family life seemed to experience more problems than the others. These results show that there needs to be differentiated consumer policies for single-person households based on their demographic and social characteristics in each consumption life area and each different purchase stage. Fourth, consumer policies for one-person family seem to be required more for women, people in their 30s, and those who had more than 10 years of single-family household life than others. As the proportion of supplying small-sized houses exceeds the half of total house supply, it also seems to require consumer policies. Although the expanded supply of small-sized houses does not belong to direct consumer policy area, since it involves a number of derived areas, still a variety of approaches and strategies including tailored consumer education, provision of information in advance, and overarching national campaign need to be put in place in such areas as housing trades, financial transactions, housing safety and quality, and small sized life items. Fifth, overall consumption life satisfaction of one-person family was in the normal range on average. The result of analysis showed that the higher the proportion of voluntary single-member household, the higher the satisfaction level of single-member households, but only when they have economic capabilities and sufficient ability to deal with various problems that come from their life-style change to single-member family. Since there has been no preceding studies conducted for single-person family in Korea on consumer problems and policies so far, this study is meaningful in that it provides useful basic information for stakeholders and researchers of consumer policies based on these analysis results.