All sessions will take place in Central Daylight Time!
POSTER PRESENTATIONS:
Poster presentations are available to view from May 18 through May 23 via ACCI’s (unlisted) YouTube Channel Poster Playlist sent out with the Zoom meeting room links to all attendees.
Poster are listed in this schedule on the last day at 6 PM so they appear at the end. Please scroll to the end to find the poster numbers, titles, descriptions, and presenters.
Be sure to live Tweet during the event! #accivirtual2020 and visit our Facebook page for photos @americancouncilonconsumerinterests.
Where and when during childhood and adolescence do people acquire the foundations of financial capability? How can financial education practitioners, program leaders, researchers evaluate program successes? What evidence has been established that can guide efforts to provide young people with effective financial education? Learn more about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's research to into the building blocks of youth financial capability and an exploration into the rigorous evidence established regarding youth financial education.
There are 18.2 million veterans in the United States. Former servicemen and women form a large and relatively homogenous group of consumers with special training and demands. To put this into perspective, the subpopulation of veterans represents more than twice the number of people in New York City. However, veterans as consumers are critically understudied and little is known about the impact of joining and leaving the military on their financial well-being compared to those who have never served. The current study proposes a natural experiment among 759 veterans, 387 of their dependents, and 5,085 civilians to assess the impact of their veteran status on financial well-being. A non-parametric nearest neighbor matching was utilized to estimate the average treatment effect of being a veteran on a comparable set of civilians, veteran family members, and the servicemen and women themselves. The results indicate that joining and leaving the military would not improve financial well-being across the entire population. However, veterans and their dependents significantly benefit from their status compared to a counterfactual world in which they had never joined the army. It is argued that these benefits arise from the specialized training that this subpopulation received during their service.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of bequest motive on investment in risky assets among older adults. Using the 2016 RAND HRS longitudinal data, we find that a strong bequest motive has a significantly positive effect on risky assets investment among older adults. It is generally true that as people age, their investments to fulfill goals within their own lifetime should be more conservative. However, age should not be a major factor for all goals. Our results suggest that financial advice should be goal-oriented and adjusted for their risk tolerance and investment horizons. Investors with a bequest motive should receive advice according to their stated goals and corresponding investment horizon.
Homelessness has been associated with severe food insufficiency and poor health outcomes. This may be due to the unique social and environmental challenges to healthful food choices that housing instability presents in addition to economic hardship. This study uses data from the National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) to examine whether housing instability is associated with various indicators of less healthful eating among low-income households. Findings from this study provide improved understanding of the mechanisms through which housing instability contributes to poor health outcomes.
Author(s): Yunhee Chang, Swarn Chatterjee, Jinhee Kim
Food images circulated in social media have become a part of our daily culture. Combining social media dataset and the USDA Food Composition Database, this study examines the relationship between social approval metrics and content of food image produced in social media. Preliminary results from the multilevel mixed-effect model revealed that visual characteristics of food image have a significant effect on image popularity. The healthiness of food is expected to influence food image popularity, which in turn might shape the content of the image posted. Our results have significant implications in health communication related to dietary choices in this digital world. More likes and comments on healthy food images/posts is likely to contribute the healthy content production. Thus, likes and comments that youths make in food images will serve as a health promotion campaign in social media.
The consumption of food prepared outside the home is an integral part of American life, and the number of people to rely on convenience food is multiplying. However, food prepared outside the home often contains excessive calories, fat, and sodium than the food prepared at home. Thus, excessive calorie intake coupled with a sedentary lifestyle can increase the risk of obesity and other health-related issues. In this connection, requiring restaurants to post calorie information on menus may help reduce caloric intake and also reduce the incidence of gaining body weights. However, little is known about the sociodemographic characteristics of individuals who are likely to use the calorie information available in the restaurants to choose the menu. Hence, this study investigates the sociodemographic characteristics of individuals who are more likely to use the calorie information available in the restaurants to choose the menu. Using the survey data collected by the CDC, this study investigates the sociodemographic characteristics of individuals who are more likely to use the calorie information available in the restaurants to choose the menu. Preliminary results indicate that the use of calorie information available in the restaurant varies among respondents based on their socio-demographic characteristics.
This study is a continuation of previous research examining three types of banking (in-person/ATM, online and mobile). Our previous research, which was presented at the American Council on Consumer Interests 2019 Conference, focused on consumers that used only one form of banking. We found compelling demographic and financial differences for respondents using only one of the three types of banking. This research goes a step further in looking at multi-mode users and the potential associations between banking type and both demographic/socioeconomic characteristics and money management practices. We consider money management practices to include the amount of liquid and investable assets, whether they use check cashing or payday loans and the amount of liabilities. The study considers and controls for key demographic and socioeconomic factors including race, ethnicity, educational attainment, and age.
Internal Economic Locus of Control factors and the power of others could be associated with mobile payments. The study found that those most knowledgeable about finances (more powerful than others), those who had determined their retirement needs, and those with higher self-assessed financial knowledge were more likely to use mobile payments. At the same time, mobile payments seemed to increase the probability of spending more than income and having an occasional bank overdraft. AFS use was positively associated with mobile payment use but not having a credit card reduced the probability of using mobile payments. Mobile payment users with credit cards seemed less likely to carry over balances or to make only the minimum payment. We conclude that fintech use is influenced by locus of control beliefs which may themselves be detrimental to spending. Financial planners and therapists should consider determining the Economic Locus of Control of their clients to fully understand clients and help them achieve ideal financial goals. Surveys can be used to determine if clients are internally or externally motivated in order to advise and monitor their plans effectively.
This study uses a sample of 400 college students from a faculty of economics to test how much financial literacy is able to preserve students from being victim of financial frauds related to the use of credit cards. At the analysis of the effectiveness of financial literacy it follows an analysis of the effectiveness of financial education. Using a quasi-experimental approach, students were divided in a treatment group, that attended a two hour seminar on credit cards and financial frauds, and a control group. Data from a pre-test and a post-test on financial literacy (in general), credit card literacy, and financial frauds were collected at October 2019 and used to assess the causal effect of the seminar on individual financial literacy and ability to recognize a financial fraud. Results confirm a positive effect of financial literacy on consumer financial behavior (more the financial literacy less the likelihood to be victim of a financial fraud), while the effect of financial education requires further investigation.
I am an Associate Professor of Finance from the University of Rome (Italy) and my main research interests are on consumer finance, financial literacy, and financial education.
