An Innovative Framework for Enhancing Consumer Expectations Surveys through Market and Personal Indicators

In this multi-disciplinary, two-study article, I complement a recent study that examined the responses given by 12,857 respondents in the “Survey of Consumers’ Expectations” (SCE) administered by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for the post-subprime crisis, 2013–2019 period. I find that consumers can be categorized along two orthogonal dimensions—optimism about the market and market forecasting errors. I perform exploratory (N = 145) and confirmatory (N = 262) analyses on an improved version of the survey to capture two other dimensions: consumer debt and connection. I propose that my upgraded version of the survey be administered by the Federal Bank of New York (or other similar organizations) as it is non-invasive and adds valuable information about the market. My findings bear important consequences for economic regulators because they provide a tool to take the pulse of the market at any given time and obtain a rich yet simple consumer profile, thus allowing the development of precise marketing targeting campaigns. From a theoretical point of view, I propose a framework that explains, in part, consumers’ tendency to accumulate alienating personal debt through the development of a unique scale measuring the emerging construct of connection.