Customer and advisor financial decisions: the Theory of Planned Behavior perspective

To date, few contributions have applied Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to financial decisions. The paper aims to investigate the applicability of Theory of Planned Behavior in predicting both the intentions of retail customers to apply for medium/high-risk financial products and the intention of advisors to offer such products. We also test the role of financial education in affecting retail investor and consultant decisions. Our results suggest that each TPB construct contributes to explaining the variance of the retail customer intention to apply for a medium/high-risk financial product, while financial literacy has no predictive power. Theory of Planned Behavior also appears to have power to explain consultant behavior intentions. Advisors appear more likely to offer medium/high-risk financial products when they have previous experience in this field, perceive control on their selling activity, feel under pressure from people who are important to them, feel confident and have a high financial literacy