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This study aims to develop and test a parsimonious theoretical model of risky indebtedness behaviour, a facet of over-indebtedness that refers to the behavioural tendency of often assuming hazardous debt levels.

The authors administered an online survey to credit card owners (n = 1,288) in an emerging economy in which consumer credit is characterized by extremely high interest rates (i.e. Brazil). The authors used covariance-based structural equation modelling to analyse the data and test for mediation effects.

Individuals who inadvertently consider their credit limits a part of their current income or are typically anxious about money are prone to engage in impulsive buying and, consequently, risky indebtedness behaviour. By engaging in such indebtedness behaviour, individuals weaken their financial preparedness for emergencies, which potentially jeopardizes their overall financial well-being.

As indebtedness is a highly sensitive issue, the self-report measures used may have produced social desirability bias.

This study discusses the responsibility of financial institutions to support consumers in building awareness on how to adequately use financial services and to provide credit access to high-risk consumers. Policymakers need to ensure that those in the private sector play fairly.

This study adds new knowledge about how destructive financial behaviours operate and impact marketing and consumers’ financial well-being. It theorizes about indebtedness by critically examining existing and newly developed concepts in the financial services marketing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to develop valid and reliable scales for assessing a driver and two obstacles potentially related to financial well-being (FWB): financial preparedness for emergency, beliefs of credit limits as additional income and risky indebtedness behaviour.

The scales were developed from scratch across six studies, employing a two-step methodology, which encompassed both qualitative (e.g. focus group, interviews) and quantitative (i.e. online surveys) data collection. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were employed to test and validate the proposed scales.

This study provides a set of three parsimonious, self-reported behavioural measures that could be employed in conjunction with objective economic indicators to identify individuals who are financially ill prepared and potential candidates for delinquency. The three proposed scales achieved satisfactory levels of reliability and convergent and discriminant validity.

The resulting scales still need to be tested for predictive validity and in different consumer groups. The scales were validated in a single culture population (Brazil, a country that presents extraordinarily high credit card interest rates), and they should be tested cross-culturally in countries with different economic and credit policies.

The literature on FWB has traditionally employed objective financial indicators as an attempt to measure the concept of FWB and its elements. Self-reported behavioural measures of such constructs are scant to the point of being non-existent for some elements. This study is the first to offer scales for measuring the elements of financial preparedness for emergency, beliefs of credit limits as additional income and risky indebtedness behaviour.

This study aims to establish that the relationship between the risky indebtedness behavior (RIB) of consumers and their attitude toward adopting buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) is not immediate but is mediated through impulse buying. Moreover, it explores how perceived risk moderates the association between the attitude to adopt BNPL and its adoption intention.

This study used the existing theoretical and empirical evidence to propose a model and validated it using the data collected from 339 young shoppers in India. Analysis of data is conducted using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The study results show that consumers’ RIB is not directly related to their attitude toward BNPL. However, impulse buying fully mediates this relationship, influencing the attitude toward BNPL. Impulse buying and attitude serially mediate the relationship between RIB and BNPL adoption intention. Further, in the context of BNPL, perceived risk strengthens the attitude-intention gap.

This study advises policymakers and BNPL providers to carefully assess users’ creditworthiness to prevent those already in debt from entering into a detrimental loop.

This study provides novel perspectives on consumer’s RIB and BNPL within the Indian context. The study additionally identifies the mediating influence of impulse buying and the moderating effect of perceived risk on BNPL adoption intention.

This study aims to further analyse the decision-making process of low-income consumer from an emerging market by verifying the influence of regulatory focus and construal level theory on indebtedness.

An experimental study was carried out with a design 2 (regulatory focus: promotion vs prevention) × 2 (psychological distance: high vs low) between subjects, with 140 low-income consumers.

Our study points out that the propensity towards indebtedness of low-income consumer is higher in a distal psychological distance. We found that promotion and prevention groups have the same propensity to indebtedness. Moreover, we highlight that low-income consumers are prone to propensity to indebtedness due to taking decisions focused on the present with an abstract mindset.

Financial awareness advertisements should focus on providing more concrete strategies in order to reduce decision-making complexity and provide ways to reduce competing situations that could deplete self-regulation resources. Also, public policy should organize educational programs to increase the low-income consumer's ability to deal with personal finances and reduce this task complexity. Finally, educational financial programs should also incorporate psychology professionals to teach mindfulness techniques applied to financial planning.

This study is the first to consider regulatory focus and construal level to explain low-income indebtedness. This paper provides a deeper analysis of the low-income consumers' decision process. Also, it supports and guides future academic and decision-making efforts.

The aim of the study is to build and validate a perceived financial well-being scale (PFWBS).

A total of 34 items were developed on a five-point Likert scale. Validation involved two phases and four steps. In the qualitative phase, interviews, validation by specialists and the pre-test were carried out. In the quantitative phase, a sample of 1,020 cases was used in the exploratory stage and another sample of 2,293 individuals in the confirmatory validation stage.

The PFWBS is composed of 23 items distributed in four dimensions (financial security, financial tranquility, financial freedom and satisfaction with financial management) that identify the perception of financial well-being of the consumers of financial products.

The authors propose a methodological framework that allows researchers, managers and policy makers to use the indicator to assess citizens' perception of financial well-being.

The PFWBS can be useful in evaluating the results of different public policies, such as income transfer programs and financial education policies. It can also serve as a parameter for the financial system to assess the perception of its customers, helping to evaluate products and services.

Financial well-being lacks valid measurement scales in the literature. This study advances by creating a scale for the assessment of the perception of financial well-being, which can be applied in different contexts.

Because steadily growing consumption is not beneficial for nature and climate and is not the same as increasing well-being, an anti-consumerism movement has formed worldwide. The renouncement of dispensable consumption will, however, only establish itself as a significant lifestyle if consumers do not perceive reduced consumption as a personal sacrifice. Since prior research has not yielded a consistent understanding of the relationship between anti-consumption and personal well-being, this paper aims to examine three factors about which theory implies that they may moderate this relationship: decision-control empowerment, market-control empowerment and the value of materialism.

The analysis is based on data from a large-scale, representative online survey (N = 1,398). Structural equation modelling with latent interaction effects is used to test how three moderators (decision-control empowerment, market-control empowerment and materialism) affect the relationship amongst four types of anti-consumption (e.g. voluntary simplicity) and three different well-being states (e.g. subjective well-being).

While both dimensions of empowerment almost always directly promote consumer well-being, significant moderation effects are present in only a few but meaningful cases. Although the materialism value tends to reduce consumers’ well-being, it improves the well-being effect of two anti-consumption styles.

Using only one sample from a wealthy country is a limitation of the study. Researchers should replicate the findings in different nations and cultures.

Consumer affairs practitioners and commercial marketing for sustainably produced, high-quality and long-lasting goods can benefit greatly from these findings.

This paper shows that sustainable marketing campaigns can more easily motivate consumers to voluntarily reduce their consumption for the benefit of society and the environment if a high level of market-control empowerment can be communicated to them.

This study provides differentiated new insights into the roles of consumer empowerment, i.e. both decision-control empowerment and market-control empowerment, and the value of materialism to frame specific relationships between different anti-consumption types and various well-being states.

In recent decades, research on consumer debt and well-being is emerging. However, research on the potential effect of debt portfolios on family financial well-being is limited. The purpose of this study is to fill this research gap by examining the potential effect of debt portfolios on family financial well-being, measured by three indicators of progressive financial burdens. These indicators include debt pressure (debt payment to income ratio >40%), debt delinquency (60+ days late for debt payments) and insolvency (total liability > total asset). Debt portfolios refer to various combinations of mortgage, credit card, vehicle, education and other loans.

With data from the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances in the USA, multivariate logistic regressions are used to identify specific debt types, consumer backgrounds and financial capability factors that are significantly associated with debt burden indicators. The findings are used to create a table demonstrating warning debt portfolios that may lead to undesirable financial outcomes.

Holdings of different types of debts are associated with different financial burdens. Specifically, holdings of three types of debts (mortgage, vehicle and other debts) tend to increase debt pressure; holdings of two types of debts (education and other debts) tend to increase debt delinquency; and holdings of four types of debts (mortgage, credit card, education and other debts) tend to increase insolvency. These results are used to construct warning debt portfolios that show greater chances of undesirable financial outcomes. Among them, the top warning portfolio for debt pressure is the combined holding of mortgage-vehicle-other debts; for debt delinquency is the holding of education-other debts; and for insolvency is the holding of mortgage-credit card-education-other debts.

This study is limited by using only cross-sectional survey data to examine associations between debt portfolios and financial burdens. To examine the causality of debt portfolios on financial burdens, appropriate panel data are necessary, which is a direction for future research. In addition, this study used data from only one developed country. In future research, data from more countries, including both developed and developing countries, should be analyzed to verify if similar relationships exist among families in other countries.

Results of this study have implications for practitioners in banking and other financial institutions. The study presents a comprehensive list of debt portfolios in the order from high risk to low risk in terms of financial burdens. Banking and other financial service professionals can use the information to help their clients make informed borrowing decisions, predict their debt burdens and offer early preventions based on their clients' debt portfolios. Marketing strategists can use the information for effective segmentation and promotion purposes.

This study utilizes a new concept, debt portfolios and examines its associations with family financial burdens. Financial burdens include three indicators that are seldom used together in previous research. These indicators conceptually indicate various severity levels of debt burdens. This study also presents a conceptual discussion on the association between debt portfolios and financial burdens and provides a better understanding of consumer debt behavior and its consequences. The warning debt portfolios constructed based on the findings have direct managerial implications for banking and other financial service professionals.

The purpose of this study is to examine how mindfulness reduces consumers’ buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) payment scheme usage and how that relates to their overall well-being.

This study uses partial least squares structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses of a conceptual framework which is rooted in the extant literature, using an approximately representative sample of Australian consumers (N = 275).

This study finds empirical evidence for the ability of mindfulness to reduce BNPL usage through increasing consumers’ financial self-control and decreasing their impulse buying tendency. This study also obtains empirical evidence that greater BNPL usage is associated with lower subjective evaluations of consumers’ overall well-being by increasing their current money management stress and decreasing their expected future financial security.

Future research could build on the effect of mindfulness that the authors find in this study and how it could be leveraged as a protective mechanism for consumers’ financial decision-making. Such research could involve mindfulness-based interventions, such as instant messaging within smartphone applications. Doing so would also help assess causality, thus addressing the limitation of the cross-sectional nature of this study.

The findings have implications for public policymakers and business practitioners. Financial counselors are encouraged to include the measurement of personality traits such as impulse buying tendency and financial self-control in intake meetings with clients and consider the benefits of offering short mindfulness training. Given the negative effect of BNPL usage on consumers’ financial and overall well-being, and the reputational risks this implies, BNPL providers are recommended to take more responsibility to ensure consumers do not fall into a debt trap, while retailers are advised to take steps to make payment processes more “mindful.”

Although mindfulness has established effects on consumer behavior, its beneficial influence on consumer financial decision-making has rarely been explored. This study also contributes to a better understanding of the antecedents and consequences of consumers’ BNPL payment scheme usage. Although its prominence is increasing in daily life, and despite the concerns of consumer advocates, policymakers and regulators regarding its risks, the topic of consumers’ BNPL usage has received little attention in academic research so far. Finally, this study extends the emerging financial well-being literature by demonstrating how BNPL usage can reduce consumers’ overall well-being through the mediating effect of increasing current money management stress and decreasing expected future financial security.

The central aim of this paper is to identify some of the motives behind the type of growth strategy followed by Spanish hotel enterprises in recent years.

This study was elaborated from secondary data corresponding to news published on the web page of a digital newspaper specialising in tourism – HostelTur. The information obtained in this way was completed and contrasted using other sources like the BARATZ database (where all the news items published in the economic press since 1981 are collected), and the web pages of hotel enterprises, since many of them publish news about their main actions along with the most relevant events that take place within these organizations.

From a sample of 444 observations, the results suggest that initial profitability, size, age and indebtedness level of firms are some of the factors determining growth strategies in this sector.

The paper throws light on some of the reasons behind the behaviour of Spanish hotel enterprises as far as growth is concerned. The innovative approach of this study, which focuses on the causes rather than on the consequences of certain corporate growth strategies, is its main contribution.