Economic insecurity, decision fatigue, and positive wellbeing in digitally mediated financial decision environments

Economic insecurity is not only an objective condition of limited resources but also a subjective state of anticipated vulnerability that may shape how people evaluate and regulate consequential financial choices. This study examines whether decision fatigue helps explain the association between economic insecurity and lower subjective and positive wellbeing in digitally mediated financial decision environments.

The empirical design contained two complementary components. European Social Survey (ESS) Round 6 data (N = 43,782 respondents nested in 29 countries) were used to test the general cross-national association between economic insecurity and subjective wellbeing. A three-wave survey of adult digital finance users in China (N = 1,512) tested the proposed mediation mechanism, with economic insecurity measured at T1, financial decision fatigue at T2, and WHO-5 positive wellbeing at T3.

In the ESS, economic insecurity was consistently associated with lower happiness and life satisfaction after demographic, socioeconomic, health-related, and country-level differences were taken into account. In the three-wave survey, T1 economic insecurity prospectively predicted greater T2 decision fatigue, and T2 decision fatigue predicted lower T3 WHO-5 positive wellbeing. The bootstrapped indirect effect was significant and remained stable across alternative outcome measures, alternative insecurity operationalizations, ordered-response models, and common-method diagnostics. The indirect pathway was stronger among frequent digital finance tool users and participants with heavier debt burdens.

The findings support a cautious longitudinal interpretation: economic insecurity is associated with lower positive wellbeing partly because it is linked to a more fatiguing pattern of financial decision engagement. The results clarify decision fatigue as a plausible psychological mechanism while avoiding a definitive causal claim and do not imply that digital finance is inherently harmful.