The relationship between financial literacy, life satisfaction and leadership: A field research on university students

Individuals need to be equipped with a certain level of financial literacy in order to reach the most ideal financial products and services and to make the best use of them, while avoiding wrong practices in financial matters and even to meet the demand for financial security. The subjects such as where to evaluate the financial resources of the individual in the most appropriate way, from which sources they can access the financial funds when needed and how to evaluate their savings optimally are issues related to financial literacy. In today's world, the impact of globalization on the one hand, and the changes and developments in the economic issues in the other, they cause some significant changes in social and technological fields while changing the needs and expectations of individuals. Effective, efficient and correct use of financial resources, which is one of the important resources for meeting the needs and expectations at the desired level and ensuring the individuals' life satisfaction, has great importance. At the point of using financial resources correctly, all individuals make many financial decisions, whether they are big or small, important or less important, these decisions significantly affect the lifestyle and satisfaction of individuals. Some researchers working on financial literacy have argued that satisfaction with individual financial events is directly linked to overall life satisfaction. In this context, it can be argued that financial literacy will increase the life satisfaction of the individual in terms of enabling better use of financial resources to meet their needs in a better manner. Increasing the level of financial literacy helps individuals to learn and make financial decisions better while enabling them to learn how financial products and services work and which ones are more relevant to their interests. Financial literacy is the ability of an individual to properly assess and manage his own financial position so that he can make appropriate decisions to achieve his/her goals in life and achieve financial well-being. One of the main characteristics of the leader is that he has the power to persuade the people around him by making the right decisions. The high level of financial literacy helps minimize errors caused by behavioral trends, thus making the most appropriate financial decisions for individuals. In this context, financial literacy is assumed to be effective on the individual's leadership behavior in order to make an effective and accurate decision by the individual with financial knowledge. In this study, the effect of financial literacy on the life satisfaction and leadership behaviors of the individual was investigated. There are currently 4288 students studying at Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences (FEAS). The sample of the study consisted of 724 students determined by using stratified sampling technique proportional to the universe. The research data were obtained by a questionnaire. The survey includes questions about students' demographic characteristics, financial literacy, leadership, and items intended to measure life satisfaction. In the statistical evaluation of the data, frequency, reliability analysis by the use of Cronbach Alpha, correlations and regression analyses are deployed in hypotheses testing. The results of the research indicate that financial literacy of the students are in the medium level. Moreover, it was observed that students have a low level of satisfaction perception in terms of life satisfaction, and they exhibit "building structure" and "showing understanding" behavior in terms of leadership behaviors. Two of the four sub-dimensions of financial literacy ("spending, savings and basic financial information" and "knowledge of basic banking products") are found to be in statistically significant (p <.05) relationships with the independent variable of the research, namely life satisfaction. However, no statistically significant relationship was found between "retirement and insurance information" and "tax and legislative information". The results of the study also indicates statistically significant relationships between the two four sub-dimensions of financial literacy ("spending, savings and basic financial information", "knowledge of basic banking products", "retirement and insurance information" and "tax and legislative information") and the two sub-dimensions of the dependent variable ("building the structure" and "showing understanding") namely the leadership (p <.05). It was found that the four sub-dimensions of financial literacy have a statistically significant and positive effect on both sub-dimensions of the leadership variable. In this context, the study consists of four chapters. In the first chapter, the concept of financial literacy is emphasized and with the help of the literature, the subject is comprehensively examined. In the second part, the subject of life satisfaction and in the third part, the concept of leadership is dealt with in the light of the literature. The last and the forth part of the study includes a field study on the relationships among variables and their levels.