The little joys of life: Spending money to buy experiences makes people happy

Spending money doing things or buying experiences makes people feel a lot more happier than spending money on material things, a study says. It adds people waiting in lines for an experience - like a live show - were more thrilled than those waiting to buy a product.

Spending money doing things or buying experiences makes people feel a lot more happier than spending money on material things, a study says.

For the study, authors from Cornell University, University of California-Berkeley and University of California-San Francisco built on previous research on the joys of experiential purchases.

They used questionnaires involving a variety of planned purchases.

During the study, college students had to think about a purchase they were about to make- either an experience or an item - and report how they felt waiting.

People waiting for an experience were more excited than those waiting for an object, researchers noted.

They also found that people waiting in lines for an experience - like a live show - were more thrilled than those waiting to buy a product.

"Consumers derive value from anticipation, and that value tends to be greater for experiential than for material purchases," the authors concluded in a paper appeared in the journal Psychological Science.