Journal of Financial Literacy

The language of platform governance: An economics-based scoping review of SME value creation and dependency in digital platform ecosystems

2026-05-07T13:35:52+07:00

Digital platforms have become a dominant form of economic organization, yet small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often participate in platform ecosystems without clear guidance on how platform governance changes value creation and value capture. This study develops an original economics-based scoping review of peer-reviewed, DOI-bearing literature to explain how platform participation affects SME performance, innovation, and dependency. Drawing on transaction cost economics, institutional economics, resource-based theory, dynamic capabilities, multi-sided market theory, and ecosystem strategy, the article asks: What economic mechanisms explain SME value creation on platforms, what governance tensions affect value capture, and what research agenda follows for business management scholarship? A theory-led scoping method was used to synthesize 40 DOI-verified sources, including foundational economics articles and contemporary digital platform studies. The synthesis identifies five connected mechanisms: transaction-cost economizing, network-effect scaling, boundary-resource governance, ecosystem complementarities, and SME platform capability. It also shows that platforms do not simply reduce market frictions; they relocate coordination, bargaining, and innovation risks from traditional firm boundaries into platform rules, interfaces, data architectures, and complementor relationships. The article contributes a three-layer framework - economizing, orchestrating, and capability-building - and proposes testable propositions for future empirical research. The findings suggest that SMEs benefit most when digital platform capability and network capability are combined with institutional safeguards against platform-owner opportunism, opaque algorithmic governance, and complementor displacement. The study concludes that platform participation is best understood not as a purely technological adoption decision but as a governance choice shaped by transaction costs, capabilities, and ecosystem power.

Financial literacy in Indonesia’s remote provinces: Evidence from a two-wave panel of 11 provinces in 2016-2022

2026-05-07T15:39:49+07:00

Financial literacy is increasingly treated as a developmental capability; however, its subnational distribution remains uneven in large archipelagic countries. This study examines financial literacy in Indonesia's remote and outer-island contexts using a balanced two-wave panel of 11 provinces observed in 2016 and 2022. The study focuses on provinces with substantial remote-area, archipelagic, frontier, and/or underdeveloped-district characteristics: Nusa Tenggara Barat, Nusa Tenggara Timur, Kalimantan Barat, Kalimantan Tengah, Kalimantan Utara, Sulawesi Tenggara, Sulawesi Barat, Maluku, Maluku Utara, Papua Barat, and Papua. Publicly reported provincial indicators from the Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK) National Survey of Financial Literacy and Inclusion are used to construct province-year measures of financial literacy, financial inclusion, and the inclusion-literacy gap. The results show that the mean financial literacy index increased from 25.55% in 2016 to 48.08% in 2022, while the mean financial inclusion index rose from 63.01% to 81.61%. The average inclusion-literacy gap narrowed from 37.45 to 33.53 pp, but the aggregate trend masked sharp heterogeneity. Nusa Tenggara Barat, Papua Barat, and Kalimantan Utara recorded large literacy catch-up, whereas Sulawesi Tenggara and Kalimantan Tengah displayed widening gaps, suggesting that formal access may have expanded faster than user capability. Panel regressions indicate a strong positive level association between inclusion and literacy, but first-difference estimates are not statistically significant, underscoring the need for caution in the causal interpretation. The study concludes that remote-area financial-literacy policy should move beyond access expansion toward capability, trust, digital safety, local-language delivery, and province-specific segmentation.

Digital financial literacy in the FinTech era: A PRISMA-guided systematic literature review

2026-05-07T16:11:42+07:00

Digital financial literacy (DFL) has become a central capability for households, micro and small enterprises, financial-service providers, and regulators as payments, savings, credit, investment, remittances, insurance, and public transfers move through digital channels. Although the field has grown quickly, it remains fragmented across financial literacy, fintech adoption, consumer protection, cybersecurity awareness, financial inclusion, and development studies. This article presents a PRISMA-guided systematic literature review of DFL. Searches of open scholarly indexes, publisher pages, institutional repositories, and backward and forward citation trails identified 447 records. After duplicate removal, title and abstract screening, and eligibility assessment, 45 studies and policy reports were included in the qualitative synthesis. The review shows that DFL is best understood as a multidimensional and risk-aware capability that combines financial knowledge, digital access and skills, understanding of digital financial products, cyber-risk awareness, attitudes toward responsible digital use, and behavior that converts knowledge into safer decisions. Empirical evidence links DFL to digital-payment adoption, savings and spending discipline, investment participation, use of formal financial services, financial resilience, financial well-being, and microenterprise performance. However, the field is constrained by inconsistent definitions, limited cross-country measurement harmonization, overreliance on cross-sectional self-report designs, insufficient attention to fraud and algorithmic consumer risks, and weak integration between literacy research and product-governance research. The article contributes an integrative framework, a coded synthesis of major antecedents and outcomes, and a future research agenda for management scholars, policymakers, and financial-service organizations seeking to design inclusive, trustworthy, and capability-enhancing digital finance ecosystems.