Judit Sági

Budapest Business School – University of Applied Sciences,

Budapest, Hungary

E-mail: sagi.judit@uni-bge.hu

ORCID 0000-0003-4197-3530

Innovative solutions in the development of households’ financial awareness: A Hungarian example

László Vasa

Széchenyi István University,

Győr, Hungary

E-mail: laszlo.vasa@ifat.hu 

ORCID 0000-0002-3805-0244

Corresponding Author

Csaba Lentner

National University of Public Service, Budapest, Hungary

E-mail: Lentner.Csaba@uni-nke.hu

ORCID 0000-0003-2241-782X

Abstract. Financial crises put stress on the society of the country of our investigation, whose financial vulnerability is raising from high indebtedness, a history of defaulted loans, and an insufficient level of financial literacy. In this context, financial awareness has been recognised as a means for decreasing households’ exposure to financial difficulties, bridging crisis periods with the substantial precautionary holding of liquid assets, and improving their well-being over longer periods of time. Raising financial awareness is a crucial policy aim, and has been investigated in this study as well. A questionnaire survey was completed by Hungarian university students across different majors, to assess the financial literacy level of the responders from their own perspective. In addition to this, we have investigated their e-banking habits. According to our findings, different student groups (clusters) have been identified by means of Ward analysis (where the significance of clusters were tested by ANOVA). Our results confirm that across all clusters the university students place their trust in non-governmental organisations and central bank foundations rather than those of the financial institutions in evolving financial literacy. This outcome of our study may provide an argument for designing policy incentives for raising financial awareness in an institutionalised way, relying on the role of the privately funded NGOs and on the central bank.

Received: February, 2020

1st Revision: May, 2020

Accepted: September, 2020

DOI: 10.14254/2071-789X.2020/13-3/2

JEL Classification: D14, D91, I25

Keywords: financial literacy, non-governmental organisations, young adults, Hungary, questionnaire survey