Associate Professor of Business Julia Mull recently completed her Ph.D. in Personal Financial Planning from Kansas State University, a leading doctoral program in the discipline.
Professor Mull's dissertation sought to examine predictors of retirement savings behavior by analyzing data from the Federal Reserve’s 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF 2019). The paper considered potential predictors through the lens of the Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM) and tenets of the Behavioral Life Cycle Hypothesis (BLC). The research delved more deeply into the underlying constructs of these concepts than is typical of TTM research efforts. Ultimately this dissertation found evidence of statistical significance when considering the TTM constructs whether considering cognitive factors or behaviors.
This research is important because the responsibility for retirement savings shifted dramatically from the employer to the employee in recent decades and evidence suggests that the challenge of saving is not being met. Results of this study could help financial planners, counselors, and educators, as well as employers wishing to support their employees, with valuable information to help develop effective interventions designed to increase retirement saving behaviors within the general population.