Influence of demographic variables on saving behaviour of rural households - A study with reference to Sriperumpudur, Chennai

Abstract

Saving is really a good habit particularly for the common layman. With the understanding of the above, a study was conducted in Sriperumpudur near Chennai about the saving behaviour of households and the influence of demographics over them. Objectives: The study was conducted by the authors to know the influence of demographic variables on a whole in saving behaviour and specifically, to know the level of influence of demographic factors in savings, to identify the level of saving of the people from their income and to identify the nature of investors. Analysis: The descriptive research design is adopted by the researchers in this study. They have adopted the non-probabilistic convenience sampling method for the collection of sample and the exact sample size of the study is 457. The respondents are approached with the systematic self-administered questionnaire for data collection. The researcher has used the chi-square test and the cluster analysis for the data analysis and further execution of the study. The study was concentrated on Sriperumpudur town near to Chennai only. Findings: The study has major findings that demographic variables like gender, age, marital status, number of earning members in the family, annual income have influenced annual savings. It is also found that there is an association between different heterogeneous groups of households' investment in financial market and their annual savings. But it has been indentified that there is no association between education and annual savings. Hence it is concluded that the demographic variables are playing vital role in influencing the saving behaviour of the individuals. Applications: The study has contributed for the improvements in the area where saving behaviour can be investigated from the dimension of influence of demographic variables. There are different applications that are made to identify the demographical behaviour of the respondents towards their investment choice. This study can also extensively be applied in the case of classification of demographic and psychographic variables. Improvements: Different educational qualifications of the respondents found in this study and they are considered as School Education, UG, PG, and Professional Education. They have different qualifications and aims in the determination of the investment avenues but at the same time the qualification does not influence them to choose the investment avenue. But all other demographic variables have an influence over the choice of investment avenues and change the behaviour of the investors towards the investment process. It is also found that there are certain developments in the behaviour of the individuals regarding their investment choice by their demographics.