Who buys new age materials? Exploring sociodemographic, religious, network, and contextual correlates of new age consumption

Despite the growing interest in Neu, Age spirituality, few studies have exp lored the correlates of participation in New Age groups or activities. Draw ing from previous work on New Age phenomena, and from other established tra ditions in the sociology of religion, we outline a set of hypotheses linkin g the consumption of New Age materials with four sets of factors: (a) socio demographic characteristics; (b) conventional religious affiliation and par ticipation; (c) embeddedness within networks of New Age believers and consu mers; and (d) community religious context. We then rest these hypotheses us ing data from a recent telephone survey of Texas residents. Few of the expe ctations are supported. Indeed, among Texans the Purchase of New Age materi als is more common and more evenly distributed across social space than pre viously suspected. By far the strongest predictor of such consumption is em beddedness within interpersonal networks composed of other New Age devotees . We conclude by identifying a number of promising directions for future th eoretical and empirical work on New Age phenomena.