The mediating effect of digital financial inclusion on gender differences in digital financial literacy and financial well-being: Evidence from Malaysian households

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This study aims to investigate the mediating effect of digital financial inclusion on the relationship between digital financial literacy and the financial well-being of Malaysian households, focusing on gender differences. Using quantitative research, a total of 210 responses, which contained 105 samples for each gender, were collected from households across Malaysia using a self-administered questionnaire. The research model was analyzed using Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling techniques. The findings revealed significant relationships between digital financial literacy and digital financial inclusion, as well as between digital financial inclusion and financial well-being. Additionally, digital financial inclusion was found to significantly mediate the relationship between digital financial literacy and financial well-being, underscoring the importance of digital financial inclusion. The MICOM analysis results show that all constructs have good configural invariance, indicating the measures are consistent across groups. High correlations between males and females suggest similarities, but permutation tests indicate these similarities might be due to chance. Variance differences for digital financial literacy and digital financial inclusion are not significant. However, financial well-being shows a significant variance difference, suggesting less variability among males, supported by higher reliability scores for the financial well-being of males, indicating more consistent responses. Notably, the standardized beta for the digital financial inclusion – financial well-being path is higher among females, indicating a stronger influence of digital financial inclusion on financial well-being for this group. However, the direct relationship between digital financial literacy and financial well-being is insignificant for both genders.

Acknowledgment
This research was supported by the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) of Malaysia through the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS/1/2022/SS01/UUM/02/10).

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    • Figure 1. Research model
    • Table 1. Demographic analysis
    • Table 2. Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio (HTMT) – matrix
    • Table 3. Hypotheses testing results
    • Table 4. Results of R2 and Q2
    • Table 5. MICOM results
    • Table 6. Multigroup analysis results
    • Table A1. Questionnaire
    • Table B1. Measurement model
    • Conceptualization
      Tze-Lin Tan, Ming-Pey Lu, Zunarni Kosim
    • Data curation
      Tze-Lin Tan
    • Formal Analysis
      Tze-Lin Tan
    • Methodology
      Tze-Lin Tan, Ming-Pey Lu
    • Writing – original draft
      Tze-Lin Tan
    • Funding acquisition
      Ming-Pey Lu
    • Supervision
      Ming-Pey Lu, Zunarni Kosim
    • Writing – review & editing
      Ming-Pey Lu, Zunarni Kosim
    • Resources
      Zunarni Kosim
    • Validation
      Zunarni Kosim