Financial information sources and their impact on the financial self-confidence gap between male and female young adult consumers

• Enhancing teacher self-confidence in delivering financial education improves student financial self-confidence. • Enhancing teacher financial self-confidence narrows the financial self-confidence gap between female and male students. • Increases in consumer financial self-confidence appear to persist over 12 months. • Increasing financial self-confidence is linked to positive and economically meaningful behaviour (e.g. increased saving). Female consumers are less financially self-confident than their male counterparts. Prior research points to this difference as one reason why female consumers experience lower financial welfare and agency over their lifetime. Consumers learn financial decision-making from others via socialization and financial education. This research tests whether the confidence of a young adult consumer’s source of financial information impacts the young adult consumer’s own financial self-confidence. Data from a randomized controlled field study (involving teachers as the financial information source and high school students as young adult consumers), supports a positive impact of financial information source self-confidence. It also reveals a greater effect on female young adult consumers, positioning improvements in financial information source self-confidence as a gender-sensitive approach to reducing the financial confidence gap between young adult males and females.