Household Behavior towards Debt in a Challenging Financial Environment: Malaysian evidence

Abstract

The study of household behavior towards debt is important in this challenging financial environment. Escalating household debt can cause social and economic problems. For the past few years, Malaysia has emerged as the country with the highest household debt in the ASEAN region. This study aims to examine the predictors of intention to incur household debt among Malaysian households. Analysis on 100 fully completed and operational questionnaires in the preliminary study revealed financial literacy and subjective norm as significant predictors of attitude and the mediating relationship between attitude and intention to incur household debt was found to be negatively significant.© 2016. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies, Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.Keywords: Household behavior; household debt; financial environment; financial literacy