Knowledge Or Exposure? Unpacking The Drivers Of Stock Market Awareness Among Students Of Government Higher Education Institutions In India

Abstract

Whether knowing about finance translates into knowing about markets is an open question for young Indians standing at the threshold of earning life. This paper studies 367 students of government higher education institutions, a group rarely sampled in Indian work on the subject, and separates what financial knowledge contributes to stock market awareness from what the settings that produce such knowledge contribute. Awareness rises steeply with an objectively scored knowledge test when the two are examined alone. Yet the relationship dissolves once three settings enter the model: a commerce or management classroom, a household in which someone already invests, and attendance at a financial literacy programme. Each setting matters at the one per cent level, together lifting explained variance to 63.5 per cent, and bootstrap estimates show knowledge transmitting only about a fifth of their combined influence. A matched comparison confirms that the programme effect is not an artefact of who chooses to attend. Neither gender nor family income separates students once exposure is held constant. Building awareness, the evidence suggests, is less about teaching facts than about placing students inside financially active environments.