FinTech Adoption and Financial Decision-Making: The Role of Digital Financial Literacy and Perceived Financial Risk

FinTech has transformed access to payments, banking, investment, lending and other financial services. Although a substantial body of research explains why individuals adopt digital financial technologies, less attention has been given to whether actual FinTech use is associated with the quality of subsequent financial decision-making. This conceptual research proposal develops an empirical framework linking FinTech adoption, perceived financial risk and digital financial literacy with financial decision-making quality. Digital financial literacy is proposed as a moderator of the relationships between FinTech adoption and decision-making and between perceived financial risk and decision-making. The study deliberately distinguishes actual FinTech use from preferences and intentions, perceived financial risk from objective risk knowledge, and decision-making quality from confidence in decisions. The proposed empirical study will use a structured questionnaire containing self-report measures and objective knowledge/decision scenarios. A target of at least 300 eligible FinTech users is proposed, subject to a priori power analysis and data-quality screening. The planned analysis includes descriptive statistics, reliability and validity assessment, Pearson correlations, hierarchical/multiple regression, simultaneous moderation analysis, conditional effects and interaction plots. Demographic analyses will be treated as exploratory rather than as additional confirmatory hypotheses. No empirical results are claimed in this proposal; any numerical examples used in the methodological section are explicitly illustrative. The study seeks to contribute to FinTech and financial-management research by shifting attention from adoption as an endpoint toward the quality of financial decisions made through digital financial channels.

FinTech adoption; actual usage; digital financial literacy; perceived financial risk; financial decision-making; financial decision quality; digital financial services.

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