AI Summary & Key Takeaways
AI InsightThe findings indicate that universities and financial-service providers should combine financial-literacy education with applied digital-security training and emphasize concrete protective routines.
📌 3 Key Takeaways
Abstract
Digital financial services have become embedded in everyday financial life; however, adopting these services does not necessarily mean using them securely. While much of the FinTech literature has focused on adoption intention, behavioral intention, and continued use, less attention has been paid to users’ security-oriented behavior after adoption. The primary aim of this study is to explain secure post-adoption behavior in digital financial services by examining Financial Literacy, Digital Security Understanding, and Social Environment as antecedents of Digital Financial Security Behavior among university students. Data were collected from 1,781 undergraduate students in Türkiye. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted on one subsample (n = 917), whereas confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were conducted on an independent subsample (n = 864). Full-collinearity variance inflation factors, measurement invariance analyses, and a multilayer perceptron artificial neural network analysis were used as robustness checks. Financial Literacy was the strongest predictor of Digital Financial Security Behavior (β = .466; p < .001), followed by Digital Security Understanding (β = .319; p < .001). The direct path from Social Environment was positive but not statistically significant (β = .077; p = .099). The model explained 59.9% of the variance in Digital Financial Security Behavior. The ANN analysis yielded the same predictor-importance ordering: Financial Literacy (100.00), Digital Security Understanding (67.29), and Social Environment (7.00). The findings indicate that universities and financial-service providers should combine financial-literacy education with applied digital-security training and emphasize concrete protective routines. By shifting attention from FinTech adoption to secure post-adoption behavior, this study contributes to research on user-side security behavior and fraud prevention in digital financial services.