Abstract
There is much debate about the impact of personal finance education on financial knowledge, attitudes and behaviour, particularly based on studies in the United Kingdom (UK) and United States of America (US). This paper makes a contribution to this debate, drawing on analysis of a survey of 521 undergraduate students at Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) in Indonesia in 2015. As part of that study, we measured the impact of a 14-week personal finance education course on financial
knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. Our findings show that, when controlling for other factors, the personal finance course did, indeed, have a positive and statistically significant impact on financial knowledge. However, there was no statistically significant impact of the course on financial attitudes or behaviour. Our analysis also shows that family financial socialisation was an important driver of financial knowledge, attitudes and behaviour while other drivers of financial behaviour
included income, work experience, year/field of study and discussing money with friends. We do not argue here that formal financial education is unimportant but that its role in changing attitudes and behaviour should be considered carefully if this is, indeed, its aim.
knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. Our findings show that, when controlling for other factors, the personal finance course did, indeed, have a positive and statistically significant impact on financial knowledge. However, there was no statistically significant impact of the course on financial attitudes or behaviour. Our analysis also shows that family financial socialisation was an important driver of financial knowledge, attitudes and behaviour while other drivers of financial behaviour
included income, work experience, year/field of study and discussing money with friends. We do not argue here that formal financial education is unimportant but that its role in changing attitudes and behaviour should be considered carefully if this is, indeed, its aim.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 351-367 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of Family and Economic Issues |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 18 Nov 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.Keywords
- Financial attitudes
- Financial behaviour
- Financial education
- Financial knowledge
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
- Economics and Econometrics