Digital Learning Environments and Financial Literacy: A Multilevel Analysis of ICT Conditions in PISA 2022

Abstract

As financial transactions and information increasingly migrate to digital platforms, financial literacy is becoming closely connected to digital competence. This study examines how information and communication technology (ICT) conditions at the student, school, and country levels are associated with adolescents’ financial literacy performance, using data from 57,970 15-year-old students across 14 countries participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022. Using a multilevel modeling approach, the analysis situates financial literacy within digitally mediated learning environments that structure how students engage with technology-based assessment tasks across levels of the education system. The findings indicate that while individual ICT access and school-level digital policies initially show positive associations with performance, these relationships largely disappear after accounting for socioeconomic background. In contrast, students’ perceived quality of ICT access at school remains positively associated with financial literacy in the fully adjusted model, suggesting that the reliability and functionality of digital infrastructures shape how students engage with digitally mediated financial tasks. National digital readiness—measured using the Network Readiness Index—explains part of the between-country variation but operates primarily as a distal contextual factor. Overall, the findings suggest that educational inequalities in financial literacy are linked not only to digital access but also to the quality and integration of digital environments in students’ learning experiences, which serve as the foundational infrastructure for deploying future adaptive and personalized learning systems.