Individual and Social Influences on Students’ Attitudes to Debt: a Cross-National Path Analysis Using Data from England and New Zealand

Harrison, Neil; Agnew, Steve

Abstract

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This study examines the construction of debt attitudes among 439 first-year undergraduates in England and New Zealand. It works from a conceptual model that predicts that attitudes will be partly determined by a range of social factors, mediated through personality and ‘financial literacy’. Path analysis is used to explore this model. The proposed model was found to be basically sound, with some notable negative findings. Socio-economic status was found to have a negligible role in determining debt attitudes, while the role of financial literacy was limited to reducing the likelihood of seeing debt as useful for lifestyle expenditure. Debt anxiety was found to be higher among students with a general predisposition to anxiety and inversely related to viewing student debt as a form of educational investment. It is concluded that student debt attitudes are multidimensional and individualised, challenging simplistic ideas of debt aversion in earlier literature.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 5, 2016
• Online Publication Date: May 26, 2016
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jun 6, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: May 26, 2018
• Journal: Higher Education Quarterly
• Print ISSN: 0951-5224
• Electronic ISSN: 1468-2273
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 70
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 332-353
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12094
• Keywords: higher education, students, debt, financial literacy, social class, gender, personality
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/919541
• Publisher URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/hequ.12094
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Harrison, N. and Agnew, S. (2016) Individual and social influences on students’ attitudes to debt: A cross-national path analysis using data from England and New Zealand. Higher Education Quarterly, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1111/hequ.12094. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
• Contract Date: Jun 6, 2016