Factors associated with smallholder farmers’ financial illiteracy in the context of an emerging economy

Access to finance poses a significant challenge for smallholder farmers, influencing the prospects for improving their livelihoods. Financial literacy stands out as a pivotal factor in overcoming this hurdle, playing a crucial role in attaining access to finance, maintaining creditworthiness and fostering economic stability. The objective of this study is to enable an understanding of the financial literacy level of smallholder farmers and to explore empirically the factors that can be associated with their financial literacy. The study is based on a field survey using structured questionnaires targeting 506 smallholder farmers located in different parts of Albania. Descriptive analysis and logit regression analyses are carried out in order to study the relationship between farmers’ capacity to calculate credit obligations and their farm assets, access to knowledge, access to financial services and behaviours related to financial record keeping. The ability to correctly calculate the value of the credit costs has been found to be positively associated with access to previous training, experience with application for accessing subsidies, access to a bank account, and their habit of financial keeping records.