Tan Xiawei, Li Xiaoping, Hu Zhineng, Niu Yongge, Ying Qianwei, Lu Yi, Xu Jiuping
Business School, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 19;13:846382. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.846382. eCollection 2022.
As starting university is a critical independence milestone for many young people, it would also be the best time to provide them with some financial education (FE). Although there have been many initiatives aimed at enhancing individual financial literacy (FL) and/or financial decision-making, meta-analyses have shown that the effectiveness of FE has been mixed. This study examined the driving forces behind the decision by college students to enroll in a targeted financial literacy curriculum (FLC) and the impact of this attendance on their FL. An endogenous switching model (ESM) was employed to account for the heterogeneity in the decision to attend or not attend the FLC and to counteract any unobservable characteristics. It was found that students with higher self-perceived FL did not prefer to attend the FLC; however, for others, FLC attendance was found to significantly boost their FL in areas such as financial knowledge (FK), financial attitude (FA), and financial behavior (FB), especially for the non-attendees under the counterfactual framework. These "non-attendees" were observed to have some characteristics (e.g., prior knowledge) that made them more financially literate regardless of attendance; however, if they had attended the FLC, they would have gained a greater FL than the attendees. As the FL of the attendees would have been much lower if they had not attended, the FLC appeared to be particularly important for the attendees, which strengthened the case for making the FLC a compulsory part of a general college education.
对于许多年轻人来说，开始上大学是一个关键的独立里程碑，这也是为他们提供一些金融教育（FE）的最佳时机。尽管已经有许多旨在提高个人金融素养（FL）和/或金融决策能力的举措，但荟萃分析表明，金融教育的效果参差不齐。本研究考察了大学生决定参加有针对性的金融素养课程（FLC）背后的驱动因素，以及参加该课程对他们金融素养的影响。采用内生转换模型（ESM）来解释参加或不参加FLC这一决策中的异质性，并抵消任何不可观察的特征。研究发现，自我感觉金融素养较高的学生并不倾向于参加FLC；然而，对于其他学生来说，参加FLC被发现能显著提高他们在金融知识（FK）、金融态度（FA）和金融行为（FB）等方面的金融素养，特别是在反事实框架下的未参加者。观察发现，这些“未参加者”具有一些特征（如先验知识），这使得他们无论是否参加都更具金融素养；然而，如果他们参加了FLC，他们将获得比参加者更高的金融素养。由于如果参加者没有参加，他们的金融素养会低得多，因此FLC对参加者似乎特别重要，这强化了将FLC作为普通大学教育必修部分的理由。
