Urban Aboriginal use of fringe financial institutions: Survey evidence from Prince George, British Columbia
This paper analyses the use of fringe financial institutions (FFIs), such as payday loan and check cashing providers, by urban Aboriginal people based on a survey undertaken in Prince George, British Columbia. We found that 60% of FFIs’ clients surveyed self-identified as Aboriginal. Their characteristics, compared to the non-Aboriginal FFI clients, included having lower average incomes, lower levels of education, more likely to be female, a higher incidence of being unemployed, higher levels of financial exclusion, and less satisfaction with the service provided by FFIs. We find that government policy towards regulating the FFI industry is inadequate for meeting the basic financial needs of urban Aboriginal people.
Financialization and Consumer Behavior
This chapter examines a number of issues to better understand consumer behavior with respect to credit and finance products. Consumerism is a powerful feature in the Global North and is becoming more commonplace in the Global South. Thus issues such as consumer debt, debt and mental health, and the relationship between consumption and advertising are important topics this chapter considers with respect to consumer behavior. Then the chapter digs into recent research from the behavioral school regarding human behavior and the use of credit and places insights from behavioral research into the context of collective behavior and structural barriers. The chapter then unpacks the concept of rationality in the context of decision-making around finance and examines common behavioral insights such as tunneling and unhelpful heuristics. The discussion of bounded rationality has limitations, and this point is explored. As we will see in Chap. 6, bounded rationality is not limited to vulnerable people but is a universal challenge.
Gender Politics and Research: Male and Female Violence in Intimate Relationships
This article reviews a wide range of research reports on male and female violence in intimate relationships and highlights the political nature of domestic violence research. The authors review incidence and prevalence-based research that uses quantitative surveys and illustrate how quantitative, family-focussed researchers tend to ignore the political and social context of domestic violence and the complex issues of gender and power. The authors argue that understanding the complexities of domestic violence requires clear definitions of what constitutes domestic violence and multi-method approaches to research, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies.