- Original authors / creators
- Christin Siegfried; Eveline Wuttke
- Original publication
- Frontiers in Psychology · Frontiers Media SA · 2021-12-02
- License & retained notices
- CC BY 4.0
Copyright © 2021 Siegfried and Wuttke.
Article-specific license evidence ↗Exact license notice
© 2021 Siegfried and Wuttke. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. - Edition changes
- Narrative paragraphs and references retained with whitespace normalization; figures, tables and display equations remain in exact retained XML and original source, not the reader edition.
- Evidence limits
- Adjacent research, not a directly sampled family-office study. Applicability to a family office requires separate assessment. To pursue the investigation of the complex structure of influencing factors, we proceed as follows. In section “Definition of Financial Literacy,” we define the construct of financial literacy. In section “Factors Influencing Financial Decisions,” we describe the state of research on financial literacy and delay of gratification and focus especially on the factors influencing financial literacy, such as gender, migration background, education, and delay of gratification. We also take moderating effects on financial literacy into account. We then outline the research questions and the study design (section “Research Questions, Study Design and Instruments”) and present the results of the study (section “Results”). These results, as well as the limitations of the study, are then discussed, and conclusions are drawn with regard to further steps (section “Discussion”). Despite the promising results, the study has some limitations. In line with many other SJTs, the reliability of the scales in terms of internal consistency, as measured with Cronbach’s alpha, is rather moderate. Catano et al. (2012) present results from a meta-analysis and report an average internal consistency of 0.46. They explain this relatively low outcome with the fact that even people who obtain a similar result in a construct may act differently in concrete situations. Moreover, an SJT represents a behavior-based simulation of a criterion behavior that is not a “pure” construct (Muck, 2013). Since many constructs require multiple skills, the search for unidimensional factors can be limiting. To act reasonably in financial decision situations, people need many dispositions, including financial knowledge, mathematical knowledge, and the ability to delay gratification. According to Catano et al. (2012), applying reliability estimates other than internal consistency (e.g., retest reliability from a longitudinal perspective) may provide additional insights in this regard. Furthermore, a more differentiated consideration of the migration background would be helpful. Here, taking into account, the language spoken in the parental home seems to be particularly promising (see Happ et al., 2018). In addition, there is a certain risk that the assessment of delay of gratification conducted via the questionnaire is not sufficiently discriminating from the assessment of financial literacy performed with the SJT. Therefore, there might be a certain amount of confounding. Furthermore, only a few factors influencing delay of gratification and financial literacy could be identified, so the explanation of variance is not particularly high, especially in the case of delay of gratification (8%). Here, it would seem to be helpful to include and investigate other influencing factors. In particular, the educational background of the parents or detailed information on the use of informal opportunities to learn seems to be promising. A further limitation is the rather small sample.
- Retraction / correction check
- No retracted-publication label in the retrieved Europe PMC record or Crossref update-to/updated-by notice. XML metadata screened for retraction. Publisher article page searched for explicit correction/retraction/concern notices; see verification record. These bounded checks do not cover unlinked or unregistered notices and are not exhaustive independent retraction clearance. Verified 2026-11-05. Automated/source checks are not human peer review.
- Preserved record
- Rights and full text checked 2026-11-05. Included in this volume on 2026-11-05. Original source dates remain unchanged.
Download the preserved source
SHA-256 (retrieved artifact): 1fcc067d327ff48879b83fd5a3124d0f5ca87a6caa7e9f39a61f234459ef7c0d
SHA-256 (preserved text edition): ca81781fc19db911ac65f3b5d6ee0124aad4602ea29d2cc2653ef358b6065edf