DETERMINANTS OF FINANCIAL WELLNESS OF RURAL HOUSEHOLDS IN THE HILL DISTRICTS OF UTTARAKHAND: AN EMPIRICAL APPROACH

The study examines significant contributors to financial wellness for rural households in the hill districts of Uttarakhand. The study takes a sample of 666 respondents through multi-stage stratified random sampling from Self-Help Groups (SHGs) and Cooperatives members, and all are small and marginal farmers. A field survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire. Except for financial knowledge and numeracy, all other constructs, such as cash management, savings behavior, risk-credit management, financial attitudes, and financial wellness, were measured on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) were conducted on 628 valid samples using SPSS 23 and AMOS 23. The results from the analysis revealed that cash management, savings behavior, and financial attitudes significantly contribute to financial wellness. The study found that households have the reasonable financial knowledge and financial numeracy skills. The study also found that savings behavior has a mediating effect on the relationship between cash management and financial wellness. The study is useful for rural development stakeholders and policymakers to strategically focus on financial inclusion programs.

individual's satisfaction towards happiness and subjective well-being. In a nutshell, financial wellness is a reflection of fulfilling the household's financial necessities, enhancement of economic status, better living conditions, cost-effective package of financial practices and perception of satisfaction.

Financial Behaviors
Financial behavior is a kind of behavior that influences taking a correct financial decision about cash, credit, risk, and savings (IGI-Global, 2021b), (Iramani & Lutfi, 2021), (Zulaihati & Widyastuti, 2020). Financial behavior is a direct and indirect influencer of financial wellness and is associated with financial literacy, income, gender, marital status, homeownership, education, to name a few. Innovative practices of cash and savings reduce the consequences of any emergency or mishap. The financial behavior of rural households is significantly correlated with financial literacy and savings (Murari, 2019). Therefore, financial behaviors can be measured through one's practice and perception, including cash management in day-to-day life, savings for the future, risk, and credit management to reduce the debt and mitigate the financial losses. financial practices. Unexpected financial risk is reduced through insurances and increased savings (Murugesan & Manohar, 2020), (Woodyard, 2013), and . Insurance is a one-time or regular investment; however, it requires income, accessibility, and financial literacy. Low-income households face different risks and shocks e.g., income volatility, livelihood risks, health, weather (Vishwanath et al., 2020). They can't afford insurance (Rampini & Viswanathan, 2016). However, the government is promoting credit cum insurance schemes, which are affordable to low-income households. As per need, rural households take loans from SHG at a nominal interest rate, which is extremely low compared to other sources. Still, households avoid taking loans except in emergencies. Overall, high credit, unforeseen risk affect savings, increase stress, and impact financial wellness. Based on the literature, the following hypothesis has been formulated: H3: Risk-credit management has a significant impact on financial wellness.

Financial Literacy
"National Strategy for Financial Education 2020-2025" (RBI, 2021) indicates that "the achievement of Financial Literacy empowers the users to make sound financial decisions which result in financial wellbeing of the individual." According to (Chong et al., 2021), (Stella et al., 2020), (N. Ismail & Zaki, 2019), (OECD, 2018), (Topa et al., 2018), (Skagerlund et al., 2018), (Jayanthi & Rau, 2017), and (Bilal & Zulfiqar, 2016) financial literacy is one's perception and knowledge about financial resources, effective utilization of financial instruments and financial decision-making skills towards economic sustainability and improvement during one's life course. It is a set of skills influenced by knowledge, a package of practices, awareness, and practices in the community, accessibility of resources, education, income, and self-actualization. Definitions indicate that the two core elements of financial literacy are financial knowledge and financial attitude, and they complement each other.

Financial Attitude
A financial attitude is a perception or tendency towards financial products and services (IGI-Global, 2021a). Financial attitude influences financial management, which impacts future wellness (RBI, 2021), (OECD/INFE, 2013). It means that a positive financial attitude towards budgeting, savings, and money has positive financial behavior. It varies from person to person, depending upon financial knowledge as well as demographic variables. Several researchers (Adiputra, 2021), (Abdullah et al., 2019), (Ameliawati & Setiyani, 2018), (Forouzani & Mohammadzadeh, 2018), (Garber & Koyama, 2017), explained the significant relationship between financial attitude and financial wellness. (Potrich et al., 2016) explained in their model that financial knowledge and financial attitude have positive impacts on financial wellness. Based on the literature review, the following hypothesis has been formulated:

Demographic Factors
Demographic cohorts like age, gender, education, income, family size, assets, and socio-economic status always influence financial wellness and its other contributors. (Collins & Urban, 2020) the study explained that age and income have a significant impact on financial wellness and relative variables. (Woodyard & Robb, 2012) examined gender and age-wise financial satisfaction and financial behavior. (Vosloo et al., 2014) study indicates that less income and less or lack of financial benefits, higher debt levels create financial stress, which impacts negatively on a person performance at work. (N. Ismail & Zaki, 2019) explained that factors like employment opportunities, income instability, family size, financial self-efficacy, and financial help-seeking behavior impact the financial wellness of the lowmedium class. (Kesavan, 2020) recommended that the regular and multiple sources of income like agriculture, livestock, and community works support catalyze financial inclusion. Based on the literature review, demographic cohorts like gender, age, education, land size, income, and savings were included in the study.

Savings Behavior as a Mediator
The primary source of income is agriculture and allied activities in the rural areas. Revenue from these sources varies due to a number of factors like production, market, and weather. Hence, the income is irregular, and savings is one of the crucial sources in every situation for all households. (Lulaj et al., 2021), (Jin et al., 2021), (S. Ismail et al., 2018), (Shin & Kim, 2018), (Magendans et al., 2017) research indicated that savings play an important role in emergencies and significant contribution to financial wellness. (Gjertson, 2016) the study found that savings are a kind of insurance of low-income households which protects against hardship. (Iramani & Lutfi, 2021) explained that a household's savings and income are positively correlated with their financial wellness. (Wieliczko et al., 2020) highlighted in their study that savings as a growth driver of sustainable development of farmers and a core pillar of financial security. (Martin & Hill, 2015) establish financial situation-poverty-well-being relationship, and found savings is a core factor of well-being. Briefly, we can conclude that effective cash management and positive savings behavior increase savings, and subsequently, financial wellness. As such, we predict the following mediation hypotheses: H5: Savings behavior mediates the relationship between cash management and financial wellness.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The primary objective was to identify the groups of factors that significantly explain financial wellness, especially in the context of rural households in hill districts of Uttarakhand. All are members of SHGs and Cooperatives and also come under small and marginal farmers. The study was conducted in the 21 hill blocks from hill districts of Uttarakhand through multi-stage stratified random sampling. Total 666 samples were collected from upper hills, middle hills, and foothills. The Survey method was used to collect the data with the help of a structured questionnaire. A structured questionnaire was used to gather data from the respondents. The questionnaire was developed through literature review and translated into the native language, "Hindi". To improve the questionnaire's accuracy, a pilot test on 70 respondents was conducted with rural households, and related modifications have been implemented. Then, a sample of 50 respondents, distinct from those included in the pilot test, were asked to pre-test the questionnaire. Other than the demographic cohort, the questionnaire consisted of 5 major sections, i.e., cash management, savings behavior, risk-credit management, financial knowledge, and financial attitude. All sections except financial knowledge were measured on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. After data cleaning (missing values, outliers), 628 responses were analyzed using SPSS 23 and AMOS 23.   (Wadhwa, 2020). 91.9% of respondents correctly calculated day-to-day financial calculations. 73.7% of respondents correctly calculated group savings. The results indicate that the members of informal savings groups actively participate in the group meetings. 87.9% of respondents can calculate dividends, which indicates that all shareholders know how dividends are calculated. However, only 42.5% of respondents correctly calculated simple interest, and 52.4% gave mathematically wrong answers. Overall, the study shows that the rural households in the hill districts have financial knowledge.

Reliability Test
The quality and consistency of the survey were further assessed using Cronbach's alpha (.820) which is greater than .7, hence acceptable (George & Mallery, 2016).  (Figure 1) with the significant (> 0.40) loadings . Table-4 states that all assumptions of EFA are met. All the items have been loaded appropriately in the factor analysis ( Table-5) and have passed the reliability test. Three items have been grouped into financial wellness, four items in cash management, three items in attitude towards savings, five items in credit-risk management, and four items in financial attitude.  (Watkins, 2018) Satisfactory communalities values > 0.50 (Field, 2018) Total variance explained is 74.685% > 50% (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986) The variance for the first factor is 17.461% < 50% (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986) Figure 1. Scree Plot

Confirmatory Factor Analysis
According to (Xia & Yang, 2019), (Hair, Hult, et al., 2017), and (Kline, 2016) studies, the model must have acceptable convergent and reliability validity as well as model-fit indices through first-order CFA.

The Goodness of Fit Indices
The recommended fit indices' values and their threshold limits are presented in Table-6, which shows that all values meet the threshold criteria. However, p-value of χ2 < 0.05, which may be because of the large sample size (>200) (Kline, 2016), (Bentler & Bonett, 1980). However, absolute fit indices, relative fit indices, and non-centrality-based indices values make the model acceptable.

Convergent Validity
According to (Hair, Hult, et al., 2017), the composite reliability of all the constructs must be more than 0.7, for attaining the construct reliability. The average variance extracted (AVE) required is above 0.500, and MSV must be less than AVE for convergent validity. All recommended conditions are passed for the proposed model (Table 7), so we can conclude that the proposed model has a convergent validity.

Discriminant Validity
Discriminant validity expresses the uniqueness of each construct from other constructs by empirical standards (Hair, Hult, et al., 2017). To examine discriminant validity, we analyzed AVE > MSV, and the square root of AVE is greater than inter-construct correlations ( Table-8). Thus, we can conclude that all the constructs in the proposed model have discriminant validity.

Structured Model
After verify model fit, and validity, path analysis has been run on AMOS 23. Figure 3 shows

Mediation Analysis
The mediating effect of the savings behavior on the financial wellness of rural households has been tested using a bootstrapping method in AMOS (Kline, 2016), (Hopwood, 2007). The results of bootstrapping methods have been shown in Table 10. The total effect of cash management on financial wellness was significant (β = .591, p = 0.002), such that better cash management led to better financial wellness. The direct effect of cash management on financial wellness was significant (β = .346, p = 0.001), and the indirect effect of cash management on financial wellness in the presence of savings behavior was also significant (β = .245, p = 0.001). The p-value of indirect effect and total effect are > 0, hence partial mediation exists (Aguinis et al., 2017). The Sobel z-value of 6.4790 > 2.58 with p-value of 0.0189 (less than 0.05) indicated that the mediation effect is significant at 95% confidence interval (Abu-Bader & Jones, 2021), (Preacher & Hayes, 2008), (Baron & Kenny, 1986). The results confirmed that savings behavior significantly mediates the relationship between cash management and financial wellness. Thus, hypothesis H5 is accepted, and we can conclude that savings behavior has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between cash management and financial wellness.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The study investigated significant contributors to financial wellness in rural households in the hill districts. These households are members of SHGs and cooperatives, and all are small and marginal farmers. The demographic statistics indicate that most of the members in SHGs and cooperatives are female (87.4%). 76.8% of members were intermediate and below educated, 70.7% were between the age group of 30 to 50, average monthly income of 69.1% members was below INR 9000, and 64.8% had average monthly savings less than INR 900 per month. Landholding data validate that all are small and marginal farmers. Reliability analysis (Cronbach's alpha = .820 > 0.7) of all items confirms the internal consistency of items. Through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), five constructs such as financial wellness, cash management, savings behavior, riskcredit management, and financial attitude were identified from 19 items. The goodness of fit indices, convergent validity, and discriminant validity support the analysis.
To test the hypothesis, path analysis was conducted. Results revealed that cash management, savings behavior, and financial attitude are significant impacts on financial wellness, which is supported by the hypothesis. The findings are substantiated with the recent literature (CHAVALI et al., 2021), (Gichuhi & Mwangi, 2021), (Maina et al., 2020). The results indicate that if households have positive attitudes towards financial practices and manage their income effectively with proper and regular savings, their financial wellness will increase. The results also indicate that risk-credit management does not significantly impact financial wellness. However, all items of risk-credit management were loaded significantly in EFA and CFA. It indicates that rural households are aware of insurance and credit schemes, but they do not take full advantage of such schemes. The study inspects the mediating effect and has found that savings behavior has a mediating effect on the relationship of cash management to financial wellness.
According to (Anand et al., 2021), (Word Bank, 2020) financial knowledge contributes to the financial wellness of rural households and makes them more robust for tough times. The study also found that rural households have sound financial knowledge about different financial schemes and welfare programs. The results show that households know the essential difference between financial instruments and are well skilled in day-to-day numerical calculations. The results also found that the financial decision is mainly taken after mutual consent of both husband and wife, demonstrating