Does Social Capital Influence Debt Literacy? The Case of Facebook Users in Poland

Kamil Filipek, Andrzej Cwynar and Wiktor Cwynar

Prague Economic Papers, 2019, vol. 2019, issue 5, 567-588

Abstract: Debt literacy has been considered to be a critical competence of modern societies since the recent global financial crisis. Debt-literate individuals are less prone to financial abuse and perform better in terms of credit management. Currently, debt-related information and knowledge are widely accessible through social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook. However, not all SNS users have equal access to debt-related resources, and, consequently, they reach different scores in debt literacy tests. This study examines relational factors (resources) behind the debt literacy of Facebook users (N = 1,055) in Poland by applying the Resource Generator tool built into the online questionnaire. This quantitative instrument helps to diagnose resources that are embedded and mobilised (social capital) from personal networks made up of kin, friends and acquaintances. We found that users with more social capital, that is, better access to resources, perform better in debt literacy tests. Moreover, weak ties (acquaintances) appear to be good sources of debt-related information and knowledge that have positive impact on debt literacy scores.

Keywords: social capital; debt literacy; financial literacy; Facebook; social media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 G41 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://pep.vse.cz/doi/10.18267/j.pep.721.html (text/html)
http://pep.vse.cz/doi/10.18267/j.pep.721.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

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:prg:jnlpep:v:2019:y:2019:i:5:id:721:p:567-588

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Editorial office Prague Economic Papers, University of Economics, nám. W. Churchilla 4, 130 67 Praha 3, Czech Republic
http://pep.vse.cz

DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.721

Access Statistics for this article

Prague Economic Papers is currently edited by Klára Pavlová

More articles in Prague Economic Papers from Prague University of Economics and Business Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Stanislav Vojir ().