Abstract

Superstitious belief of the number of eight as a lucky number is common among the Malaysian Chinese as its pronunciation carries the meaning of “prosperity”. Nevertheless, for the non-Chinese (i.e. Malay) who do not believe in superstition, it is just a neutral number. The existence of the two groups provides a natural setting to use the nonlinear decomposition analysis. This innovative approach allows us to decompose the price premium of number 8 obtained from the hedonic regression model into superstition and non-superstition components. The nonlinear decomposition analysis shows that approximately 37% to 45% of the estimated premium value which are associated with number 8 is attributed to superstition. This implies that the estimation of previous studies on superstitious value of number eight by using the hedonic regression model is subjected to an upward bias.

摘要

马来西亚华人普遍迷信数字八是幸运数字，因为它的发音带有“繁荣”的意思。尽管如此，对于不相信迷信的非华人（即马来人）来说，这只是一个中立的数字。这两个组的存在为使用非线性分解分析提供了一个自然的环境。这种创新的方法使我们能够将从享乐回归模型中获得的数字 8 的价格溢价分解为迷信和非迷信成分。非线性分解分析表明，与数字 8 相关的估计保费价值中约有 37% 至 45% 归因于迷信。