Citizens’ perceptions on public finance literacy: Familiarity, importance, actual use and proposed learning objectives
| Published date | 01 March 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/01447394231159998 |
| Author | Sotirios Karatzimas |
| Date | 01 March 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Teaching Public Administration
2024, Vol. 42(1) 42–59
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/01447394231159998
journals.sagepub.com/home/tpa
Citizens’perceptions on public
finance literacy: Familiarity,
importance, actual use and
proposed learning objectives
Sotirios Karatzimas
Department of Accounting and Finance, Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece
Abstract
Recent literature highlights the importance of providing citizens public sector accounting
education to help them become public finance literate. This study performs a
questionnaire-based survey to a convenient sample of citizens to collect their perspective
on the topic. The results indicate an average familiarity of the respondents with key public
finance concepts, with male respondents appearing more familiar. The respondents place
more importance in being able to monitor and assess the state’sfinancial performance and
condition rather than that of the local government. In practice, when making voting
decisions during municipal elections they focus less on financial information, compared to
when it comes to state elections, mainly due to difficulties in accessing the municipalities’
financial information. The respondents are further supportive of receiving public sector
accounting education as they believe it could help them monitor the local and state
government’sfinancial condition and performance, take more rational election decisions
and more actively participate to public matters. They perceive that such an education
should take place from high-school and not earlier, and they find useful this educational
process to continue via online and on-site seminars. Finally, they make recommendations
on the specific content (learning objectives) of public sector accounting education at the
different educational levels (school, high-school, municipal seminars, and online
seminars).
Keywords
Government accounting literacy, public finance literacy, pubic finance education, public
sector accounting education, citizens
Corresponding author:
Sotirios Karatzimas, Department of Accounting and Finance, Athens University of Economics and Business,
Derigny 12, Athens 10434 Greece.
Email: skaratzimas@aueb.gr
Introduction
Citizens are in need of financial and non-financial information related to the state and local
government to make informed public-related decisions (Brusca and Montesinos, 2006;
Cohen and Karatzimas, 2015). Public sector accounting standard setting boards perceive
citizens as one of the most important groups of users (GASB, 1987;CICA, 2009;AASB,
2009;IPSASB, 2013) and there is an ongoing debate on identifying their main infor-
mation needs that should be satisfied (Brusca and Montesinos, 2006;Van Helden and
Reichard, 2019;Kang et al., 2022).
In this realm governments try to be more accountable to citizens with the provision of
relevant information (Monfardini, 2010). Some jurisdictions have further employed popular
financial reports to provide a more easily understood information experience to non-
mation needs are satisfied through the adequate provision of information, it is not certain that
citizens can actually make use of this information, since the average citizen is illiterate in
public finance issues (Karatzimas, 2020). One wonders whether the provision of relevant
knowledge through specific education on public finance could help the average citizen make
use of this information. Recent literature (Allen, 2013;Karatzimas 2020,2021) has high-
lighted the importance of the provision of such education to citizens to create public finance
(or government accounting) literate
1
citizens. In particular, government accounting literacy
refers to citizens possessing the appropriate level of public sector accounting knowledge and
understanding that could help them reach a state of being able to evaluate and monitor public
administrations and inform their public-related decisions (Karatzimas, 2020). As such it
differs from the concept of financial literacy, but appears complementary to the context of tax
literacy (Nichita et al., 2019;De Clercq, 2021).
Scope of this study is to record citizens’perceptions on the usefulness of public finance
information and on the possibility of receiving relevant education. For the purposes of
the study a questionnaire-based survey to a convenient sample of citizens is per-
formed. The originally developed questionnaire starts by evaluating the respondents’
rate of familiarity with key public sector accounting/public finance concepts (e.g.
public debt; accountability; budget) to introduce the participants of the study to the
conceptual boundaries of the topic, and to actually evaluate their familiarity with key
concepts. Then a set of questions addresses the importance of being able to mon itor
and assess local and state government financial performance and condition, the impact
from receiving PSA education to citizens’public-related decision-making, as well as
the role, context and content of such education in different educational levels. The
interest of the study lies in the fact that it is –to the best of our knowledge-the first
questionnaire-based survey that holistically approaches citizens’perception on the
important issue of public finance literacy, starting from familiarity level to conclude
with learning objectives’suggestions. So far the topic has been addressed either
theoretically (e.g. Karatzimas, 2020,2021) or with the provision of educational
insights (Allen, 2013), but it deserves further investigation as it touches upon issues of
outmost importance that range from increased democratic participa tion to improved
public value generation.
Karatzimas 43
Get this document and AI-powered insights with a free trial of vLex and Vincent AI
Get Started for FreeStart Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
