THE INFLUENCE OF PARENTAL FINANCIAL SOCIALISATION TECHNIQUES ON STUDENT FINANCIAL BEHAVIOUR

Year 2019, , 72 - 88, 31.07.2019

Dr Zl Antoni C Rootman Fw Struwig

https://doi.org/10.34109/ijefs.201911205

Cited By: 9

Abstract

This study investigated which financial socialisation techniques parents used to
influence students’ financial behaviour. Few students possess satisfactory levels
of knowledge regarding financial concepts and, as a result, often struggle with
high debt levels. Although parents can play an important role in developing and
shaping the financial behaviour of students, they often fail to teach students about
money management. Studies find that for students to demonstrate responsible
financial behaviour, their financial socialisation by their parents should improve. The literature review identified seven financial socialisation techniques parents
use to socialise students about financial concepts. These include financial secrecy,
financial conflict, financial teaching, modelling of financial behaviour,
monitoring of financial behaviour, reinforcement of financial behaviour and
parental relationships. The study followed a quantitative research design to
gather the responses of 350 South African students by means of a selfadministered, structured questionnaire. Only six financial socialisation
techniques were extracted from the exploratory factor analysis. Hypotheses were
re-formulated to test the relationships between the financial socialisation
techniques of parents and the financial behaviour of students. The empirical
results revealed that three financial socialisation techniques used by parents,
namely, financial teaching and monitoring, modelling of financial behaviour and
reinforcement of financial behaviour significantly influence the financial
behaviour of students. Therefore, parents should increase financial teaching and
monitoring, the modelling of financial behaviour as well as the reinforcement of
financial behaviour to improve the financial behaviour of students. These results
have implications for parents and financial educators, and the implementation of
this study’s recommendations could ultimately improve the financial behaviour of
South African students.

Keywords

Student, Children, Parents, Behaviour, Socialisation, Techniques, relationships

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