Kok Fei CHONG, Mohamad Fazli SABRI, Amirah Shazana MAGLI, Husniyah ABD RAHIM, Nuradibah MOKHTAR, Mohd Amim OTHMAN / Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business Vol 8 No 3 (2021) 0905–0915 905 905 Print ISSN: 2288-4637 / Online ISSN 2288-4645 doi:10.13106/jafeb.2021.vol8.no3.0905 The Effects of Financial Literacy, Self-Efficacy and Self-Coping on Financial Behavior of Emerging Adults * Kok Fei CHONG 1 , Mohamad Fazli SABRI 2 , Amirah Shazana MAGLI 3 , Husniyah ABD RAHIM 4 , Nuradibah MOKHTAR 5 , Mohd Amim OTHMAN 6 Received: November 30, 2020 Revised: February 01, 2021 Accepted: February 16, 2021 Abstract This study examines the relationship between financial behavior, financial literacy, self-efficacy, and self-coping among emerging adults. The study population is 790 respondents from 11 Credit Counselling and Debt Management (CCDM). Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) was used to analyze Pearson Correlation and Multiple regression. It was used to determine the relationships and recognize determinants of emerging adults’ financial behavior respectively. In this study, financial literacy, self-efficacy, self-coping, and financial behavior variables were entered into the regression. A total of 790 respondents aged 40 and below were selected. An independent sample t-test was administered to compare the financial behavior scores for females and males. The results reveal that there was significant difference in the mean of financial behavior scores for females (M = 87.20, SD = 18.00) and males (M = 89.70, SD = 16.80; t (765) = 2.010, p = 0.045, two-tailed). The multiple regression results indicate that the model explained 13.4% of the variance in financial behavior, which is predicted significantly by the model (F = 38.361, p = 0.000). This study will be beneficial to policymakers to improve living conditions and to promote good financial behavior, financial literacy, self-efficacy as well as self-coping especially for emerging adults in Malaysia. Keywords: Financial Literacy, Self-Efficacy, Self-Coping, Financial Behavior, Emerging Adults JEL Classification Code: D10, D12, D14, O15 1. Introduction In Malaysia, the debt problems affecting emerging adults are alarming as the household debt service ratio is on an escalating trend. Bank Negara Malaysia (2010) has recently reported debts of over six million households in Malaysia, totaling RM653 billion, with RM108000 per household average. Statistics show that Malaysia’s millennium or Gene Y, which is referred to in this study as emerging adults, has huge accumulated debt. Studies conducted by the Asian Institute of Finance (2015) reported that these young individuals face major financial stress in their early life, with many living beyond their means and being trapped in emotional expenditure (Wan Azmi et al., 2015). Moreover, over the years, the number of emerging adults faced with bankruptcy has been steadily increasing. The majority of emerging adults are dependent on high-cost loans, personal loans, and credit card borrowings (Asian Institute of Finance, 2015). The highest cases of bankruptcy among the youth were recorded in 2014 with a total of 13,098 cases, followed by 13,036 cases in 2013, based on the statistics from the Insolvency Department (The Star, 2018). This problem can be overwhelmed by the distinction between *Acknowledgements: The authors wish to express their gratefulness to the Universiti Putra Malaysia (GP-IPS/2017/9572700) for funding this study entitled “Determinants of Debt Management Programme Dropped Out Probability among Agensi Kaunseling dan Pengurusan Kredit Debt Management Programme Participant”. 1 First Author. Postgraduate Student, Department of Resource Management & Consumer Studies, Faculty of Human Ecology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia. Email: desmondfocus@gmail.com 2 Corresponding Author. Professor, Faculty of Human Ecology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia [Postal Address: 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia] Email: fazli@upm.edu.my 3 Department of Resource Management & Consumer Studies, Faculty of Human Ecology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia. Email: amirahshazana90@gmail.com 4 Senior Lecturer, Department of Resource Management & Consumer Studies, Faculty of Human Ecology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia. Email: husniyah@upm.edu.my 5 Researcher, Department of Resource Management & Consumer Studies, Faculty of Human Ecology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia. Email: adib8994@gmail.com 6 Senior Lecturer, Department of Resource Management & Consumer Studies, Faculty of Human Ecology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia. Email: mohdamim@gmail.com © Copyright: The Author(s) This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.