금융시장에서의 소비자소외에 관한 탐색적 연구 (An Exploratory Study on Consumer Alienation in Financial Market)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국소비자학회
· 수록지 정보 : 소비자학연구 / 30권 / 5호 / 101 ~ 123페이지
· 저자명 : 서가연, 최현자, 한지형

초록

본 연구는 보다 포괄적이고 소비자지향적인 금융포용의 달성을 위한 연구로, 기존의 금융소외가 고려하지 않았던 소비자가 금융시장에서 느끼는 심리적 소외감을 설명할 수 있는 금융시장에서의 소비자소외의 개념을 소개하고 이 에 대한 탐색적 연구를 수행하고자 하였다. 이를 위하여 기존의 ‘소비자소외’개념을 차용하여 금융시장에서의 소비자 소외를 정의하였으며, 금융시장에서 소비자들이 느끼는 소비자소외 수준을 측정함으로써 금융시장에 대한 소비자들 의 주관적 인식을 살펴보고, 그 원인을 규명하고자 하였다.
전반적인 금융시장에서의 소비자소외 수준은 5점 만점에 평균 3.73점으로 나타나 금융시장에서 소비자소외 수준 이 평균을 상회하는 결과를 보였다. 본 연구에서 측정된 두 차원인 ‘구조적 소외’와 ‘개인적 소외’에 대해, 전자에 대 한 응답은 5점 만점 중 평균 3.88점, 후자는 3.58점으로 나타나 소비자들은 소비자소외의 두 가지 요인 중 구조적 소외를 시장에서 더 크게 느끼는 것으로 분석되었다. 다음으로 소비자소외에 영향을 미치는 요인들을 규명하고 요 인들의 상대적인 영향력을 알아보기 위해 소비자소외 변수를 종속변수로 하는 다중회귀분석을 실시하였다. 분석 결 과, 일반적으로정책대상의기준이되는성별, 연령, 소득수준과같은인구통계학적특성혹은재무적특성외에 금융이해력, 위험수용성향 변수의 영향력 크기가 정적으로 가장 크게 나타났다. 이러한 결과 소비자가 금융거래 역 량을 강화하도록 하는 노력에 대한 정책적 지지와 함께 시장의 전반적인 환경과 금융회사들이 보다 소비자 지향적 으로 변화해야할 필요가 있음을 시사한다.

영어초록

With increasing interest in financial inclusion, various entities are trying to bring up solutions to protect vulnerable consumers in financial markets. Most of these policies are generally targeting consumers who are in relatively vulnerable positions based on certain criteria such as low-income or young people in society. However, when it comes to the nature of the financial market that financial products are complicated and the range of information that can be understood by consumers is limited, there must be more general efforts to embrace both vulnerable consumers and other consumers. In other words, in addition to the policy for vulnerable consumers, efforts to improve the whole market environment itself are required. This study started with the idea that the majority of consumers who are not eligible for qualified policies in the financial market may also experience various problems considering the characteristics of the financial market mentioned above. In that matter, it has been examined the subjective perceptions of financial markets by measuring the level of consumer alienation, which consumers feel in the financial market.
In this study, financial consumers in their 20s and 60s were selected as a sample to measure the level and causes of consumer alienation. The sampling was conducted based on gender, age, and residence among Korean demographic characteristics. A total of 529 copies were collected by the online survey method, and 526 responses were selected except for unfaithful responses. The results are as follows.
According to previous research, the concept of consumer alienation is composed of various dimensions such as powerlessness, meaninglessness, and normlessness, etc. In this study, exploratory factor analysis was performed to examine consumer alienation from various dimensions. It was divided into two sub-dimensions: one is ‘normlessness’ and the other is ‘meaninglessness.’ ‘Normlessness’ means that companies are not responsible for social values and focus on pursuing monetary values. ‘Meaninglessness’ indicates that consumers experience difficulties in making effective decisions as they feel that they are not able to access certain information or services. However, to match the right words for the original meanings, those concepts have been renamed as ‘structural alienation’ and ‘personal alienation.’ Based on this concept structure, this study first examined the overall level of consumer alienation in the market. The level of consumer alienation was 3.73 out of 5, indicating that the level of consumer alienation exceeded the average in the financial market. Looking at each dimension in detail, the structural alienation dimension is 3.88 out of 5 points and the personal alienation dimension is 3.58 points. These results show that consumers evaluate that negative experiences in financial markets are more derived from financial companies than themselves. Therefore, consumers are expected to conduct unsatisfactory financial activities because financial companies do not operate in a consumer-centric manner.
Next, multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the relative influence of factors affecting consumer alienation. The independent variables were listed below: demographic characteristics of consumers including income, house-ownership, gender, age, education and also financial characteristics of consumers such as financial literacy, risk tolerance, etc. It turned out that age, financial literacy, cost burden for continuous transactions, and technology usage capacity. If consumers who are financially affordable or have needs and higher financial literacy, they tend to be more unsatisfied driven by profit-oriented business behavior or selective information provision from financial companies in financial markets. This implies that inequality in the trading position, which is a typical problem in the financial market, still exists today. Therefore, efforts are needed to find various alternatives to overcome this gap in the financial market.
According to the analysis of personal alienation, the level of alienation was higher in the case of women, feeling a high-cost burden for continuous financial transactions, having the higher technology usage capability or greater dissatisfaction in the market. On the other hand, if consumers have more tendency to pursue risk or stronger belief that they can do their financial transactions, the level of personal alienation went lower. Taken together, these results suggest that factors such as confidence or the psychological characteristics necessary to make decisions to determine the level of alienation. Besides, considering that investment products tend to have a significant tendency to increase personal alienation, it is necessary to systematically establish a proactive and ex-post consumer protection system. Finally, in the time of increasing non- face-to-face transactions with the advent of the fintech, the result that the higher the level of technology use, the higher the level of consumer dissatisfaction, implies that apps for financial transactions are not friendly enough for consumers to use.
This study has its own strength in terms of measuring the level of dissatisfaction that consumers experience in the process of financial transactions. Moreover, it was the first trial to adopt the concept of consumer alienation to the financial market. In future studies, it is essential to constitute a more sophisticated scale to measure consumer alienation from a deeper perspective.

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