Are Financial Well-Being and Financial Stress the Same Construct? Insights from an Intensive Longitudinal Study
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sorgente2023 - p. 554
Despite this progress in understanding of the predictors of financial well-being, there is still no consensus on conceptualization of financial well-being itself (Riitsalu & van Raaij, 2022).
sorgente2023 - p. 554
Some scholars believe that financial well-being corresponds to the absence of stress related to money management (Netemeyer et al., 2018) and, as consequence, they consider the constructs of “financial well-being” and (lack of) “financial stress” equivalent.
sorgente2023 - p. 554
This intensive longitudinal data collection allowed us to assess the fluctuations of financial well-being and financial stress over time and to evaluate (1) whether the two constructs fluctuate in parallel – despite in the opposite direction – within-level, (2) if their between-level means are strongly associated, and (3) if the two constructs are influenced by the same external variables.
sorgente2023 - p. 554
The expression “financial well-being” indicates a positive economic condition from both an objective and subjective point of view. The term objective financial well-being refers to the material assets owned by an individual (income, property), while the term subjective financial well-being indicates the perception that the individual has of his own objective economic condition (Sorgente & Lanz, 2017).
sorgente2023 - p. 554
The expression “financial stress” indicates a condition of economic difficulty, characterized by not being able to support one’s expenses (Kim & Garman, 2003). As with financial well-being, it is possible to distinguish an objective and a subjective side of financial stress (Sinclair & Cheung, 2016).
sorgente2023 - p. 555
For example, in the seminal paper by Shim et al. (2010) the “subjective financial well-being” construct has been measured through three items: I am satisfied with the way I pay my bills; I have difficulty paying for things (reversed); I am constantly worried about money (reversed). Two (items 2 and 3) out of three items are measures of “subjective financial stress” (financial difficulties, worry about money) but authors have implicitly assumed that reversing these items, they are measuring the subjective financial well-being.
sorgente2023 - p. 556
The term “intensive longitudinal” method refers to longitudinal research designs that have enough repeated measurements (at least five; Bolger and Laurenceau, 2013) to model a distinct change process for each subject and that have made the measurements intensively, i.e., at short intervals of time, such as every few hours or on a daily basis (Cotter & Silvia, 2019).
sorgente2023 - p. 558
According to a recent review (Sorgente et al., 2022), only one intensive longitudinal study (Totenhagen et al., 2018) measured both subjective financial well-being and subjective financial stress, but the authors did not investigate the relationship between the two constructs and modeled them separately.
sorgente2023 - p. 559
To ensure a diverse sample, we used a variety of recruitment techniques, such as university and student mailing lists, our own participant pools, and snowball recruiting initiated through colleagues, students, and acquaintances who were asked to forward the link to the survey to emerging adults (i.e., people aged between 20 and 30 years old) they know. After reaching a sufficient number of contacts (about 200), details were sent by email to the potential participants in order to inform them about the research’s objectives, duration, and reward. In particular, we explained that for 14 consecutive days, every evening (from 7 pm to 10 pm), the participants would complete a short questionnaire lasting two minutes, in which they would be asked to report information on their levels of (objective and subjective) financial well-being and (objective and subjective) financial stress.
sorgente2023 - p. 560
As done in previous studies (e.g., Totenhagen et al., 2018), the daily subjective financial well-being was evaluated using a single item. We selected the item from a longer scale (MSFWBS; Sorgente and Lanz, 2019) usually administered to assess the subjective financial well-being of emerging adults and added “for the past 24 hours” at the end of the statements to make it refers to the daily financial well-being.
sorgente2023 - p. 560
Single-item scale to assess subjective financial stress of emerging adults have been already used in previous studies (e.g., Britt et al., 2016). These sample items have been adapted to the daily framework. Specifically, to report their perception of financial stress, participants answered the question “During the past 24 hours, how much has your economic and financial life stressed you out?”
sorgente2023 - p. 560
In agreement with previous intensive longitudinal studies (Sorgente et al., 2022), the daily objective financial well-being was operationalized as the amount of money earned during the day. To facilitate recall of the exact amount of money earned each day, participants had a list of possible sources of earnings (job, pocket money/support from parents, loan, cash gift, economic winnings such lottery, investments, assets, reimbursement) for which they had to indicate whether a specific kind of earning had occurred in the last 24 h.
sorgente2023 - p. 561
In agreement with previous intensive longitudinal studies (Sorgente et al., 2022), the daily objective financial stress was operationalized as the amount of money spent during the day. To facilitate recall of the exact amount of money spent each day, participants had a list of expense categories (expenses for food, shopping, home, transportation, leisure and friends, recreational or cultural activities, subscription services, hobbies and sports, electronics, financial expenses, wellness and beauty, health, family members, education, work, animals, other) for which they had to indicate whether they had spent money for a specific kind of expense in the last 24 h.
sorgente2023 - p. 562
To achieve the study’s aims we used the dynamic structural equation modeling framework (DSEM; Asparouhov et al., 2018) and conducted the analysis using Mplus software (version 8.8). Specifically, in the present study we used a multilevel VAR(1) model to simultaneously describe the temporal dynamics (i.e., within-level change) of subjective financial well-being and subjective financial stress (aim 1) and to estimate their relationship at the between-subjects level (aim 2).
sorgente2023 - p. 567
As reported in Table 3, at the within-level, objective financial stress was a significant predictor of both subjective financial well-being and subjective financial stress. Specifically, when participants had a day on which they spent more than their average daily earnings, they had a decrease in subjective financial well-being (− 0.260; CI[− 0.337, −0.191]) and an increase in subjective financial stress (0.350; CI[0.267, 0.433]). As for the other predictor, the number of days of extraordinary expenses participants had didn’t impact their average daily subjective financial well-being or stress.
sorgente2023 - p. 568
Instead, at the within level, while daily objective financial stress (i.e., having had an extraordinary expense) led to a decrease in subjective financial well-being and an increase in subjective financial stress, daily objective financial well-being (i.e., having had extraordinary earnings) only affected the daily perception of subjective financial well-being (that increased), but did not result in any change in the subjective perception of financial stress.
Note: Ora, isso pode estudar relacionado à teoria dos prospectos!