Goals, commitment and peer effects as tools for improving the behavioural outcomes of financial education

Financial education has been criticised for its limited effect on behaviour. To explore ways of improving behaviour in managing personal finances, interpretive methodology and an intervention were used in five financial education courses in Estonia. It was hypothesised that applying behavioural insights into the design of financial education helps the participants to improve their financial behaviours. The intervention employed goal setting, partitioning, commitment to achieving the goal, feedback, deadlines, peer pressure and advice. These five case studies reveal that promotional goals are more motivating than prevention oriented goals, peer effects can be utilised only in homogeneous groups and that partitioning needs to be incentivised. The results provide support for the hypothesis; furthermore, positive changes in behaviour were noted also 6？months after the end of the course. However, the intervention and its elements would benefit from further testing