The Impact of Financial Literacy on Individuals’ Participation in the Damascus Securities Exchange


Abstract in English

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.

References used

ACQUAH-SAM, E.; SALAMI, K. Knowledge and Participation in Capital Market Activities: the Ghanaian Experience. International Journal of Scientific Research in Education, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2013,189-203
MEHRA, R.; PRESCOTT, E. The Equity Premium - A puzzle. Journal of Monetary Economics 15, 1985, 145-161
GUVENEN, F. Reconciling Conflicting Evidence on the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution: A Macroeconomic Perspective. Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 53, No. 7, 2006, 1451-1472

Download