The central role of financial behavior within financial literacy: A gender-based configurational approach to understanding risk aversion

This paper analyzes how different dimensions of financial literacy (financial knowledge, financial attitudes, and financial behavior) are associated with levels of risk aversion among owner-managers of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), adopting a gender-based configurational approach. Using survey data from Spanish SMEs collected by the Bank of Spain, this research applies fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify causal configurations of the dimensions of financial literacy that are linked to high levels of risk aversion and to examine gender-based differences in these configurational pathways. The results show that financial behavior constitutes a necessary condition for high risk aversion for both men and women. Beyond this shared condition, the sufficient configurations differ by gender. Among men, high risk aversion is associated with a single configuration combining financial knowledge and financial behavior. Among women, high risk aversion emerges through two alternative configurations in which financial behavior combines either with financial knowledge or with financial attitudes. Overall, the findings highlight the central role of financial behavior within financial literacy and suggest that gender differences in risk aversion are better explained by configurational patterns than by isolated financial literacy components.