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This study introduces the concept of financial advice deserts (FADs), including financial advice received from personal financial advisors (PFAs) and Certified Financial Planners™ (CFP professionals) and investigates the association between living in these FAD states and the retirement planning activities of individuals.

This study uses merged data gathered from multiple sources including (1) available state-level information on CFP professionals from the CFP board website, (2) state-level information on PFAs from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and (3) individual levels of retirement planning behavior and other personal characteristics from the 2018 FINRA National Financial Capability Study. Using web data extraction tools and logistic regression analyses, this study examines the association between a series of individual retirement planning activities and living in the FAD states.

The study found that living in the FAD states was negatively associated with both having retirement accounts and contributing regularly to retirement accounts. Overall, the findings of this study underscore the need for providing greater access to financial advice and improving financial literacy among financially marginalized populations who are residing in FAD states in the United States of America.

This study makes unique contributions to the literature by raising the issue of geographic inequality in terms of access to financial advice and introducing the innovative notion of FADs. The findings provide fresh insights into the understanding of retirement planning and preparedness from the perspective of state-level inequality of financial advice through PFAs and CFP professionals, thereby expanding the previous knowledge that emphasizes only individual- and household-level differences. Significant implications for public policies and practitioners are also discussed.

This study aims to utilize the theory of planned behavior, integrating materialism, financial socialization, and perceived financial capability, to explore the psychological determinants influencing credit card repayment behaviors.

The data for this research was sourced from the 2016 National Financial Well-Being Survey. Employing Structural Equation Modeling, this study investigated whether materialism, financial socialization, and perceived financial capability influenced credit card repayment behaviors through their impact on financial intention.

The analysis suggests significant associations between materialism, financial socialization, and perceived financial capability with credit card repayment behaviors. Furthermore, the results highlight the substantial mediating role of financial intention in shaping the relationship between materialism, financial socialization, perceived financial capability, and credit card repayment behaviors.

Employing Structural Equation Modeling, the study investigated whether materialism, financial socialization, and perceived financial capability indirectly influenced credit card repayment behaviors through their impact on financial intention.

The findings of this study underscore the importance of considering credit card utilization and leverage used by average consumers. Supporting community-based financial education programs might be useful for reaching individuals and families at the grassroots level and educating participants about the deleterious effects of maintaining high credit card balances and the perils of pursuing their materialistic desires by leveraging these purchases through the utilization of credit cards. Credit card companies can use these findings to inform their marketing strategies and design credit products that cater to the needs of different segments of customers. From a policy standpoint, it is extremely important to develop programs that protect those individuals who are most vulnerable and need the most help with managing their money.

Policy makers can also use these findings to develop regulations and consumer protection measures to promote responsible credit card use. For instance, they can introduce laws that require credit card companies to disclose the full cost of credit, including interest rates, fees, and charges, in a clear and transparent manner. They can also promote financial education programs to help individuals with high levels of materialism manage their credit card usage and debt.

The paper integrates two well-established theoretical frameworks, the theory of planned behavior and materialism, to provide a comprehensive understanding of consumer credit card usage. This integration allows for a more nuanced analysis of the factors influencing credit card behavior. By utilizing data from the 2016 National Financial Well-Being Survey and employing Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), the paper conducts a robust empirical investigation. This adds credibility to the findings and allows for the testing of hypotheses derived from the theoretical frameworks. The findings of the paper have practical implications for policymakers, financial institutions, and consumer advocates.

Emerging literature on fintech has shown that consumers have been slow to adopt fintech-based products and services. However, limited literature is available regarding the factors associated with consumers' adoption of these products and services. This study aims to investigate the factors that are associated with consumer adoption of fintech-based products and services.

Data on the usage and perception of smartphone financial apps by US residents ages 18–70 was collected in the fall of 2020. Based on the Extended Post-Acceptance Model (EPAM) framework, Structural Equation Modeling and Confirmatory Factor Analysis were applied to inspect how financial capability, perceived security and perceived usefulness affect fintech adoption.

Fintech proficiency, investment risk tolerance and perceived safety are positively associated with the frequency of fintech application use upon adoption. Consumers are more likely to feel safer if they are more financially capable and technologically proficient. Consumers with higher risk tolerance tend to believe fintech apps are safe to use. Consumers with higher fintech proficiency are more likely to recognize the usefulness of fintech services.

The study introduces a revised EPAM framework with antecedent factors, fintech proficiency and risk tolerance to investigate the factors associated with consumer adoption of fintech-based products and services. The key findings of this study validate the EPAM in the American context. Additionally, this research is among the first to have confirmed the direct relationship between perceived security and fintech adoption. The results have practical implications for existing fintech companies, banks and financial institutions, policymakers and financial advisory practices considering adopting fintech-based services for their clients.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether low financial literacy is associated with the use of risky mortgages and delinquency.

A probit analysis is used to analyze the results of a survey of US homeowners.

It was found that borrowers with low financial literacy are more likely to have a risky mortgage and be delinquent in their mortgage payments.

The results indicate that many risky loan borrowers may be unable to evaluate the risks inherent in the mortgage, which contributes to high delinquency rates. These results suggest the need for education and caution in the use of risky mortgages.

Drawing from socialization theory this study investigates the effect of financial socialization and mediating role of “attitude toward money” (ATM) and financial literacy on the financial behavior of young adults in an emerging economy.

A cross-sectional survey of 302 young adults was conducted and responses were analyzed to determine the key antecedents of financial behavior. The model was tested using OLS regression. Parallel mediation was tested using Process Macro in SPSS.

ATM, subjective financial literacy, objective financial literacy are positively associated with financial behavior. Furthermore, parallel mediation analysis establishes the role of ATM and subjective financial literacy as a mediator between financial socialization and financial behavior.

These findings have implications for both financial and academic institutions and policymakers. Academic institutions should introduce personal wealth management courses at early stages in their courses to help young adults make appropriate financial decisions. Policymakers should emphasize creating a habit of budgeting and managing expenses among young adults in addition to promoting financial literacy.

This study focuses on determinants of financial behavior in young adults and specifically, argues that involving parents to financially socialize their children have a crucial impact on subjective financial literacy and ATM which has not been explored in previous literature.

This study aims to systematically review the literature on digital consumers’ decision-making in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector and proposes an integrative framework.

By combining databases such as Web of Science and Elton B. Stephens Company (EBSCO), we identified, analyzed and synthesized 53 peer-reviewed empirical articles that explore the connection between digital solutions in the BFSI sector and various phases and constructs of the consumer decision-making process. We examined the dependent variables (DVs) used to operationalize consumer decision-making, performed a thematic analysis of the papers and proposed an integrative framework.

The reviewed articles have garnered more attention from marketing researchers than from BFSI or artificial intelligence scholars, often employing traditional behavioral and experimental methodologies that have several limitations. We identified 38 DVs used to operationalize consumer decision-making, with the most frequently recurring constructs being “Intention to use,” “Utilization,” “Satisfaction,” “Perceived usefulness” and “Trust.” We propose an integrative framework that groups these DVs into three main clusters: subjects’ perceptions, user experience and adoption/usage choice. This systematic literature review highlights the increasing importance of emotion in recent decades and underscores the difficulty of establishing a framework where relationships between variables are direct and unidirectional, as traditional economic theories assume.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to provide a comprehensive and systematic understanding of the DVs and the research methods used to study the impact of recent digital solutions on consumer decision-making in the BFSI sector. Further, a framework is proposed that can offer a new perspective for consumer research.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that casting actors with similar facial features in a movie can pose challenges in foreign markets, hindering the audience's ability to recognize and remember characters. Extending developments in the literature on the cross-race effect, we hypothesize that facial similarity – the extent to which the actors starring in a movie share similar facial features – will reduce the country-level box-office performance of US movies in East and South-East Asia (ESEA) countries.

We assembled data from various secondary data sources on US non-animation movies (2012–2021) and their releases in ESEA countries. Combining the data resulted in a cross-section of 2,616 movie-country observations.

Actors' facial similarity in a US movie's cast reduces its box-office performance in ESEA countries. This effect is weakened as immigration in the country, internet penetration in the country and star power increase and strengthened as cast size increases.

This first study on the effects of cast's facial similarity on box-office performance represents a novel extension to the growing literature on the antecedents of movies' box-office performance by being at the intersection of the two literature streams on (1) the box-office effects of cast characteristics and (2) the antecedents, in general, of box-office performance in the ESEA region.