Factors influencing financial literacy among university students in Malaysia

Financial literacy is defined as the ability to manage and understand the comprehension of money effectively together with informed judgement. The main objective of this study is to assess the influence of money attitude, financial behaviour, subjective norms, and parental influence on the financial literacy of UUM and IIUM (including IIUM Pagoh Campus) university students. To the knowledge of the researcher, there is a lack of such studies being conducted before especially targeting the lower bracket of university students from the age of 18 to 23 years old. The motivation of the study is that there is a need for financially literate students so that they would be able to make sound decisions when they are no longer under the supervision of their parents. This study used questionnaires to obtain primary data of IIUM and UUM university students coming from first-year university students A total of 83 responses were obtained. Descriptive statistics, correlation and multiple regression analysis were applied using the SPSS package. The finding highlights that UUM university students in the northern region have higher financial literacy than the IIUM university students in the central region. This study found that money attitude, financial behaviour and subjective norms are highly significant and have a positive influence on financial literacy whereas parental influence is negative and is not significantly related to financial literacy of the university students. Financial behaviour has the largest effect among the 3 significant variables.