Financial literacy and self-control in fintech: Evidence from a field experiment on online consumer borrowing
- We report the results of a longitudinal intervention with students across five universities in China designed to reduce online consumer debt. Our research design allocates individuals to either a financial literacy treatment, a self-control training program, or a zero-touch control group. Financial education interventions improve test scores on general financial literacy but only marginally affect future online borrowing. Our self-control treatment features detailed tracking of spending and borrowing activity with a third-party app and introspection about individuals' consumption with a counselor. These sessions reduce future online borrowing, delinquency charges, and borrowing for entertainment reasons - and are driven by the male subjects in the sample. Our results suggest that self-regulation can affect financial behavior in e-commerce platforms.
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| Author: | Di Bu, Tobin HanspalORCiDGND, Yin Liao, Yong Liu |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-533750 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3469571 |
| Parent Title (English): | SAFE working paper series ; No. 273 |
| Series (Serial Number): | SAFE working paper (273) |
| Publisher: | SAFE |
| Place of publication: | Frankfurt am Main |
| Document Type: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Year of Completion: | 2020 |
| Year of first Publication: | 2020 |
| Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
| Release Date: | 2020/03/30 |
| Tag: | China; Consumer credit; FinTech; Financial literacy; Self-control; online borrowing |
| Issue: | October 2019 |
| Page Number: | 60 |
| HeBIS-PPN: | 463992636 |
| Institutes: | Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Wirtschaftswissenschaften |
| Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / House of Finance (HoF) | |
| Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Center for Financial Studies (CFS) | |
| Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE) | |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft |
| Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
| Licence (German): |  Deutsches Urheberrecht |
