Contextual life-world financial decisions

The OECD, in its documents on financial education, follows an instrumental-rational decision theory oriented towards the maximization of individual self-interest. The following questions arise: On what basis do people actually make financial decisions? Are the decision-making factors individual and instrumental-rational, or do value-rational, emotional, traditional or habitual factors—socially and culturally shaped—as well as social integration play a much greater role? To address these questions, a first step involves examining relevant OECD documents for the explicit and implicit basic assumptions of their decision theory. In a second step, reports from debtor and study counselling services will be analysed (and supplemented, if necessary, with interviews with counsellors) to gain insights into influencing factors of financial decisions. Finally, in a third step, students in business education will be surveyed who have predominantly completed vocational training before beginning their studies and have already gained work experience themselves, and are now embarking on a new career path. Questions concerning educational and study financing are often particularly significant for these students in their biographies. Not infrequently, students also have family or care obligations. Quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative surveys (content analysis and documentary method) are intended to provide insights into financial decisions, particularly regarding the decision-making factors and basic attitudes of those affected as well as their social embeddedness, i.e., to what extent they made the decisions alone or with their partners and families. Finally, the empirical results will be compared with the explicit and implicit assumptions of the OECD and the research questions will be answered in order to derive recommendations for financial education.