Digital transformation and consumer financial behavior: a quantitative systematic review of digital financial literacy as a dynamic capability

Abstract

This study examines how digital transformation is associated with digital financial literacy (DFL) and consumer financial behavior within technology-enabled financial ecosystems. The study synthesizes evidence from the literature and develops an explanatory framework in which DFL is conceptualized as a dynamic capability that functions as an intervening mechanism linking digital exposure, financial learning, and behavioral outcomes. A quantitative systematic literature review was conducted using Scopus and Web of Science, covering studies published between 2014 and 2025. The final corpus comprised 98 peer-reviewed journal articles aligned with the research question, including empirical, quantitative, and review-based studies. The analysis combined bibliometric mapping, author co-citation analysis, article-level coded evidence, Jaccard coefficients, Fisher’s exact tests, chi-square tests, and hierarchical decision-tree modeling. The re-estimated article-level evidence indicates that digital transformation and digital financial literacy frequently co-occur in the reviewed literature (Jaccard = 0.771). However, this broad association is not statistically significant according to Fisher’s exact test. The strongest evidence emerges from the targeted transformation-to-literacy coding, which is strongly associated with the presence of financial literacy (Jaccard = 0.909; Fisher p < 0.001; chi-square p < 0.001). By contrast, associations involving financial behavior are weaker and statistically unsupported. Decision-tree analysis further identifies technology use, income, and education as salient capability conditions, indicating that digital financial capability continues to be shaped by socioeconomic resources. The study contributes by conceptualizing DFL as a dynamic capability that evolves through technological engagement, behavioral learning, institutional trust, and governance conditions. Methodologically, it demonstrates a transparent and reproducible approach for integrating bibliometric mapping with inferential evidence synthesis in systematic literature reviews while explicitly acknowledging the limitations of article-level coded evidence, open-access sampling, and non-causal inference. The findings are consistent with the interpretation that digital transformation is associated with DFL as an evolving dynamic capability. However, the weaker, non-significant associations with financial behavior indicate that this capability-based reading should be treated as a plausible explanatory framework rather than a confirmed causal pathway.