What Enables Financial Resilience: Insights from a Participatory Research and Design Process with VSLA Members in Nigeria

Anne Angsten Clark (), Olawale Babatunde Awoyemi () and Benjamin Stewart Allen ()
Additional contact information
Anne Angsten Clark: University of Bristol
Olawale Babatunde Awoyemi: Olawale Awoyemi, Lutheran World Relief
Benjamin Stewart Allen: Benjamin Allen, Catholic Relief Services

The European Journal of Development Research, 2025, vol. 37, issue 3, No 1, 477-499

Abstract: Abstract Using a participatory research and design process co-led with community researchers, we construct a ground-up, relational understanding of the enablers of financial resilience and explore the role that Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) play in strengthening those enablers. Leveraging data from qualitative interviews and focus groups, we inductively identify three interconnected categories of enablers: financial and economic enablers, social enablers, and the institutional environment. Through their positive impact on financial, economic, and social enablers, VSLAs help members build absorptive and adaptive resilience capacity but not transformative capacity, due to institutional environment constraints. Our findings highlight how resilience enablers relate to and interact with each other and emphasize the critical role of the institutional environment in enhancing financial resilience. They also underscore the potential benefits of increasing our understanding of the connections between resilience enablers and interventions to enhance the design and impact of interventions aimed at strengthening financial resilience.

Keywords: Financial resilience; Institutional environment; Village savings and loan associations (VSLAs); Participatory research; Participatory design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41287-024-00679-0 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:pal:eurjdr:v:37:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1057_s41287-024-00679-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/41287/PS2

DOI: 10.1057/s41287-024-00679-0

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of Development Research is currently edited by Spencer Henson and Natalia Lorenzoni

More articles in The European Journal of Development Research from Palgrave Macmillan, European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().