DIGITAL FINANCIAL LITERACY AND FINANCIAL WELL-BEING: A PRISMA BASED SYSTEMATIC SYNTHESIS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL, BEHAVIORAL, AND INCLUSIVE PATHWAYS

Abstract

The use of banking, payments, saving and credit is becoming increasingly prevalent on a mobile and online setting, making digital financial literacy a critical factor in financial well-being. However, the processes linking digital competence with subjective economic security are still fragmented across subjects and settings. This study is a systematic synthesis of literature that maps the relationship between digital financial literacy and financial well-being through a systematic synthesis of the relevant psychological, behavioral, and structural pathways, and was guided by the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, while using only peer-reviewed and institutional literature from 2015 to 2025. After performing a structured search in Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, EBSCOhost, and Google Scholar, the list of records was further refined by using pre-registered inclusion/exclusion criteria for population, construct focus, publication window, language, and study design, followed by grey-literature screening and citation tracking. A final narrative corpus was created around six themes: (1) direct association between digital financial literacy and financial well-being; (2) financial self-efficacy as a psychological pathway; (3) financial behavior as a behavioral pathway; (4) financial stress as a countervailing emotional pathway; (5) financial inclusion as a moderating and facilitating condition; and (6) moderating and facilitating demographic variables such as age, gender, education, and income. Convergent evidence from the synthesis highlights that while both paths are significant, digital financial literacy seems to have a stronger direct pathway to financial well-being, mediated mostly through self-efficacy-behaviour chains, and an indirect pathway, which operates through the alleviation of financial stress, with financial inclusion and socio-demographic characteristics affecting the intensity of these pathways. The review also shows that there is a lack of studies that model behavioral and psychological mediators together, and there is a focus on a few national contexts. The design of financial education and the governance of fintech products are discussed, as well as potential confirmatory research in the future.