The individuals’ Participation in the Securities Exchange plays an important role in
the development of the financial market. Without the active and continuous participation,
the financial market lacks the financial products and its liquidity, and
also the increased
participation leads to the creation of effective trading dynamics of buying and selling.
This paper examines the impact of financial literacy on the individuals’ Participation
in Damascus Securities Exchange. To achieve the objective of the study, data is collected
based on a questionnaire specially designed for this purpose. And the questionnaire has
been distributed to a sample of (384) individuals from the merchants and industrialists who
are registered in the Damascus Chamber of Commerce and Damascus Chamber of
Industry. The study to analysis data depends on using a software of Statistical Package for
the Social Sciences known as SPSS. It has been used some statistical methods like
repetition and percentages in addition to Chi-Square Test to examine hypotheses
concerning the relationship between demographic variables and financial literacy, and a
model logistic regression to study the impact of financial literacy on the individuals’s
participation in the Damascus Securities Exchange
The research finds that the financial literacy of the members of the respondents is
very far from the desired level to participation in the Damascus Securities Exchange where
only (22%) of respondents have a good level of financial literacy. In addition to that, the
research highlights the presence of a statistically significant effect of financial literacy to
participate in the securities exchange; the increasing financial literacy index from a low
level to a better one leads to increase the likelihood of participation by (24%). The research
also concludes two things that there is a relationship between each of the variables of
gender, income and financial literacy, and on the other hand there is no relationship
between the educational qualification and the financial literacy.
