Currently, many Australians are experiencing disadvantage which is affecting their financial decision-making. Sudden changes in the economic climate, experiencing scarcity and other disadvantage-related factors affect people’s perception of financial options, their willingness to take risks, the degree to which they want to avoid possible losses, their willingness to tolerate unknown, fail at self-control, and their propensity to make decision-making mistakes.
This project will develop and test new theories of the extent to which financial decision-making is influenced by context in which they live and operate by applying recent discoveries in neuroscience on how the brain incorporates past and current experience into perception and testing them in laboratory and lab-in-the-field conditions. This will provide a scientific foundation upon which to design policy interventions to improve the financial well-being of all Australians.