The Psychology of COVID-19 Economic Impact Payment Use

Sarah D. Asebedo (), Taufiq Hasan Quadria (), Blake T. Gray () and Yi Liu ()
Additional contact information
Sarah D. Asebedo: Texas Tech University
Taufiq Hasan Quadria: Texas Tech University
Blake T. Gray: Texas Tech University
Yi Liu: St. John Fisher College

Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 2022, vol. 43, issue 2, No 4, 239-260

Abstract: Abstract This study investigates how American adults’ personality and financial self-efficacy (FSE) beliefs contributed to how they used their COVID-19 CARES Act Economic Impact Payment (EIP) for spending needs, spending wants, and financial transactions (save, invest, debt repayment). The results from a sample of 1172 Amazon MTurk users collected in July 2020 suggest that both personality traits and FSE beliefs were associated with EIP use. Specifically, this study finds that FSE and conscientiousness emerged as the most robust predictors of EIP use across all categories of financial behavior with a greater allocation of EIP funds to saving and less to spending needs and debt repayment. Additionally, greater FSE is associated with investing, while greater conscientiousness is connected to more spending on wants. The results suggest that saving habits associated with personality and FSE persist in a crisis environment, and pre-crisis preparedness may allow for greater spending flexibility on wants. Significant relationships were also found for openness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The findings highlight how people use unexpected financial windfalls during crises and uncertainty and how personal characteristics contribute to this decision making.

Keywords: Economic impact payments; CARES Act; COVID-19; Financial self-efficacy; Big five personality traits; Spending needs and wants (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10834-021-09804-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jfamec:v:43:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1007_s10834-021-09804-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... es/journal/10834/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10834-021-09804-1

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Family and Economic Issues is currently edited by Joyce Serido

More articles in Journal of Family and Economic Issues from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().