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This study aims to examine the nexus between digital financial literacy and customers’ perceived financial behavior within the Kuwaiti context. Moreover, it will further explore how digital financial literacy relates to financial behavior dimensions.

Data collection was facilitated by creating a questionnaire derived from multiple literature sources. This study used a cross-sectional, time-based dimension. Data was analyzed using the partial least square (PLS) structural equation modeling approach, using the Smart-PLS 4 software for computation.

Findings demonstrated a significant relationship between digital financial literacy and financial behavior, with a path coefficient of 0.542, a p-value of 0.000 and an R² value of 0.581. The explorative model revealed substantial relationships between many dimensions of digital financial literacy and various dimensions of financial behavior. More precisely, financial knowledge, awareness and decision-making were the factors that had the most significant impact on financial behavior.

Kuwaiti policymakers should consider including digital financial literacy programs in comprehensive financial education programs to improve public understanding of digital financial instruments and their consequences.

As the authors know, this is the initial endeavor to evaluate the relationship between digital financial literacy, financial behavior and their respective dimensions.

This study aims to evaluate the efficiency of using some polymers at different concentrations in the consolidation of vegetable-tanned leather artifacts.

New vegetable-tanned leather samples were prepared. The consolidants used were polyacrylamide (PAM) and polymethyl methacrylate/hydroxyethyl methacrylate (MMA-HEMA). Accelerated heat aging was applied to the untreated and treated samples. Analytical techniques used were Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), digital microscope, scanning electron microscope (SEM), change of color and mechanical properties.

The characteristic FTIR bands showed the effect of accelerated heat aging on the molecular structure of the studied samples, but treated and aged treated samples used were better than aged untreated samples. Microscopic investigations (digital and SEM), and mechanical properties proved that 2% was the best concentration for polymers used. The change in the total color difference of the treated and aged treated samples was limited.

This study presents the important results obtained from PAM and poly(MMA-HEMA) used for the consolidation of vegetable-tanned leather artifacts. The best results of the studied polymers can be applied directly to protect historical vegetable-tanned leathers.

The authors explore the entanglement of smartphone technology and power in this paper. This paper explores the following question: In what ways does the actualization of smartphone affordances result in empowering outcomes (i.e. increase or reduce oppression) in the daily lives of refugees? Leveraging both affordance and feminist theories, the authors develop a hybrid lens bringing attention to the contextualized relationship between social process goals and affordances for sociality, upon which the authors introduce the notion of “goal-affordance interrelations”. The authors then trace how the actualization of these interrelations increases or reduces oppression.

Using an abductive approach, the authors analyze 32 semi-structured interview transcriptions conducted with Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

The analysis in this study reveals four categories of social process goals (meet financial needs, satisfy security needs, communicate and learn and maintain pre-existing social ties) that are intimate components of contextually meaningful affordances. When actualized, the goal–affordance interrelations fundamentally shape refugee experiences of power outcomes. The findings suggest forms of empowerment where powerlessness, marginalization, violence and exploitation are perceived to be reduced. Actualization outcomes are also found to increase perceived oppression. Additionally, the findings reveal that not all interrelations are actualized, such that the anticipation of an oppressive power outcome may limit the actualization of affordances for sociality.

This research raises considerations concerning technology and oppression, and that efforts to empower refugees through technology should critically question whether the lived experiences of oppression will be reduced. The findings of this study reveal various forms of less empowering (i.e. oppressive) outcomes for the refugees sampled, they also point to the potential politicization of the actualization of goal–affordance interrelations.