"Determinants of saving behavior among university students in Ho Chi Minh city"
Abstract
It is undeniable that saving has several advantages such as ensuring people have money for emergency expenses, providing them the opportunity to earn extra money on the interest received from their investments, and allowing them to finance their big goals without going into debt. However, in fact, it can be difficult for young people to understand the reason for saving their money. As a result, they tend to spend lavishly on unnecessary things. The motive of this study is to identify which factors determine young people‟s saving behavior so that effective solutions can be developed and ultimately improve their saving behavior. In particular, the study focuses on examining whether financial literacy, parental socialization, peer influence, and self control can predict students‟ saving behavior. A survey questionnaire is designed to collect the primary data from 371 university students in Ho Chi Minh City. The results from a regression analysis provide evidence that parental socialization has the most predictive power over the students‟ saving behavior, followed by financial literacy and peer influence, whereas self-control, though a statistically significant predictor, is less powerful than the other variables. These findings are expected to have practical implications for retail banks, educational policy makers, and parents.