Overdraft consumption and the main reasons and motivations for this kind of indebtedness among university students in the Czech Republic and the UK

Abstract

This research sought to explore students in the banking industry, their motivations and behaviours to overdraft consumption and understand what were the main reasons why students used overdrafts and for what purposes they used this borrowed money. Due to the lack of research into student indebtedness and their tendencies to debts in Czech Republic the researcher decided to carry out a comparative study of overdraft consumption between Czech and British students which could have implications for other similar countries which have, or must consider, education fees for tertiary education. So, a key quantitative research based on 120 self-administrated on-line questionnaires from Czech and UK higher education students will be presented where one university from each country was chosen as a representative sample. The findings highlighted that there was a significant difference between the amounts of overdraft in both investigated countries and that the UK students reported relatively high debt levels, compared to their Czech counterparts. The research identified key contextual factors associated with the environment in which the students lived and their responsibility to manage the borrowed money.