How Consumer Trust in Financial Institutions Influences Relationships Between Knowledge, Cognitive Effort and Financial Healthiness

Trust not only relates to customer trust in individual financial companies (i.e., narrow-scope trust) but also relates to the broader business context in which consumers carry out their financial decisions (i.e., broad-scope trust). Based on two surveys comprising 1,155 bank consumers and 764 pension consumers, respectively, the results of this study indicate that broad-scope trust negatively moderates relations between knowledge and financial healthiness and between cognitive effort and financial healthiness. In addition, it is demonstrated that broad-scope trust negatively influences cognitive effort and positively influences financial healthiness.