- Original authors / creators
- Henrik Levinsson; Lydia Santérus; Emma Samuelsson
- Original publication
- Behavioral Sciences · Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) · 2025-11-08
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- CC BY 4.0
© 2025 by the authors.
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- Evidence limits
- Adjacent research, not a directly sampled family-office study. Applicability to a family office requires separate assessment. Commonly used and validated instruments have been used to examine the relationship between financial literacy and coping strategies on financial consumer behaviour, but there are limitations to consider when drawing conclusions from the results of this study. The BriefCOPE instrument does not specifically measure financial coping, which might threaten the construct’s validity, but the significant results indicate a relationship between coping and financial decisions and knowledge, allowing for further exploration. The variable targeting consumer loans is self-constructed and was limited to a span of 18 months (1.5 years) in an attempt to address persistent and prolonged financial issues. However, this particular timespan can be subject to further reflection. The large sample size enables for a representative reflection of this particular Swedish population, as well as to conduct statistical investigations of the data. However, it is important to take into consideration that a survey research method might threaten ecological validity due to possible behavioural differences and response biases in the respondents. This is especially relevant in the context of personal finances and coping, which could be topics where individuals may want to present themselves in a socially desirable way. The participants in this study were collected through a web panel specifically targeting individuals who have accepted survey participation. With this in mind, one should be cautious about representativity; young adults most affected by financial difficulties are less likely to participate in surveys addressing these issues. The data being collected through a web panel and from individuals who have specifically accepted participating in surveys might threaten the external validity due to selection bias. However, the complete anonymity of the survey minimises the potential response bias in the sample. Future research would benefit from examining public registers on debts and mental health indicators, thereby reducing self-reporting bias. Although statistically significant, as indicated by the stable Wald statistics (e.g., financial literacy, avoidant coping, gender), the overall models explained only a small portion of variance in outcomes. This is something to take into consideration. However, while several factors contribute to explaining consumer financial behaviour, coping is an important psychological piece of the puzzle that is often overlooked. Furthermore, the interpretation of the ‘Big Three’ financial literacy questions was discussed during the statistical investigations in this study, and whether the data should be continuously or nominally interpreted. In our conclusion, the division ended up entailing the participants who answered all three questions correctly as financially literate, and the rest as not. It might be worth exploring the ‘Big Three’ variable as continuous, and with respondents scoring in the categories of ‘high’, ‘medium’, and ‘low’ financial literacy instead of ‘yes’ or ‘no’, for the possibility of more nuanced information. The present study is cross-sectional; therefore, it cannot claim any causal relationships. However, this was not the aim of the study, which was to find potential associations between financial literacy, coping strategies, and consumer financial behaviour. Therefore, even though the study has found correlations between the included variables, causal relationships should not be assumed. Rather, the findings can be considered hypothesis-generating and serve as a basis for further research. There are also other factors that should be investigated in relation to the outcome variables, such as income, critical life events, and other indicators of mental health. In order to investigate potential mediating effects, a next step would be to adopt a causal approach using path analysis or structural equation modelling. A behavioural economic perspective was added into the interpretation of the findings to provide additional depth and theoretical context. The theory of hyperbolic discounting was not measured in the survey but applied as a conceptual framing to investigate behavioural patterns in financial and coping behaviour. Behavioural economics often relies on experimental or longitudinal methods for causal relations, thus here it is applied as a conceptual addition rather than an empirical analysis. Since it was not investigated in this particular survey, and it is not necessarily suitable for a cross-sectional study, the behavioural economic perspective should be seen as a way to enhance the interpretation of findings and to consider potential underlying processes. The inclusion of this perspective aimed to act as an initiative for further research and exploration from this perspective.
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