Digital Interventions to Increase Financial Knowledge: Evidence from a Pilot RCT

Luis Oberrauch () and Tim Kaiser
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Luis Oberrauch: University of Kaiserslautern

No 16811, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study the effects of low-intensity digital financial education interventions on undergraduate students' financial knowledge in a small-scale RCT. We test the substitutability or complementarity of two treatments: an online video financial education treatment and an incentive-based approach where students are issued pre-paid voucher cards worth 50 EUR to register with a broker specializing in roboadvised investment in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Three months after the intervention, the video treatment enhanced financial knowledge scores by more than 50 percent of a standard deviation. Conversely, the vouchers showed no effect. The findings suggest that subsidies encouraging roboadvised investment into ETFs cannot substitute direct financial education in our setting, and there is no evidence for complementarity between these interventions in creating human capital in the domain of financial decision-making.

Keywords: financial education; financial knowledge; financial literacy; digital intervention; robo-advisor; ETFs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2024-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-edu, nep-exp, nep-fle and nep-knm
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Published - published in: Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, 2024, 43, 100954

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