Purpose: This paper delineates the impact of social context and savings attitudes on consumer's self-reported long-term savings and discusses how these drivers can be influenced to increase an individual's savings rate.
Design/methodology/approach: An online survey was conducted among 993 German savers. A structural equation model quantified the influence of the social context and an individual's attitudes on long-term savings behavior, as stated by consumers.
Findings: Both social context constructs - subjective norms and relationship quality - exert a significant influence on the savings attitudes of perceived anxiety and perceived importance, which in turn significantly affect long-term savings. Furthermore, the results of a mediation analysis indicated that the social context only has an indirect effect on long-term savings.
Research limitations/implications: The study was conducted in Germany only. Therefore, the results may not apply across cultures. In addition, the salient belief structures, access channels used, and savings product categories were not part of this study.
Practical implications: The results showed that financial institutions can influence an individual's attitudes toward long-term savings by providing a satisfying and trusted relationship. The positive effect on savings attitudes will translate to an increased long-term savings rate. According to the analysis, financial service providers can only have an indirect effect on long-term savings behavior.
Originality/value: This paper delineates the impact of the social environment on long-term savings. This relationship has not been investigated in previous research. In addition, the influence of the social context within the attitudes-behavior framework for long-term savings is expounded.
Previous research has not yet discovered the value that consumers associate with a particular channel choice. Moreover, the effect of personal traits on consumers' value attribution has not been examined in the multichannel literature. In our paper we address this research gap by studying the influence of a chosen search channel (online vs. offline) on a consumer's value attributed to using this channel for later purchase. We introduce the construct channel willingness to pay (CWTP) as a measurement of a consumer's valuation of a specific buying channel.This term expresses the amount a consumer is willing to pay in order to change the chosen buying channel.
The authors investigate the savings behavior in an empirical study and define social context and attitudes towards saving as the main drivers. By applying a behavioral approach hypotheses are formulated in order to test the influence of the social context on the saving attitudes perceived anxiety, perceived importance and involvement. In addition, the authors research the impact of these attitudes on short and long-term saving. The inclusion of self-control and household income further helps to explain saving behavior. Both, social context constructs, social influence and relationship quality, exhibit a significant influence on all attitudes. Moreover all attitudes show a significant impact on short- and long-term saving. Thus, savings institution can influence the savings behavior by offering a high and trustworthy relationship quality. This in turn affects perceived anxiety, involvement and perceived importance which are the main drivers of saving as shown by the authors.
In this paper, we analyze under which conditions a self-supporting insur- ance guaranty fund can be beneficial for the policyholders in an incomplete mar- ket.Within the analyzed setting, we find out that in general, if existent, the potential advantages from its introduction cannot be fairly divided among the participating insurers. Thereby, we have to expect systematic wealth transfers between the policy- holders of different insurance companies.We introduce a framework for utility-based fund charges as a solution to this problem.
