https://doi.org/10.65725/JCMCE/2S1/013JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY TRENDS IN MANAGEMENT, COMMERCE AND ECONOMICS (JCMCE)
Volume 2, Special Issue 1, 2026
Special Issue : Algorithmic Economies: AI Across Digital Finance, Social Life, and Higher Education
Abstract:
Household financial decisions are influenced not only by income and prices but also by expectations, perceptions, confidence and behavioural tendencies. Behavioural finance provides a useful framework for understanding why actual household spending and saving decisions may differ from the predictions of purely rational models. The present study examines household spending and saving behaviour in India from a behavioural-finance perspective using secondary data. The study draws primarily on the Reserve Bank of India’s Urban Consumer Confidence Survey (UCCS), Inflation Expectations Survey of Households, household financial savings data and payment-system indicators, supplemented by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation’s Household Consumption Expenditure Survey. The analysis focuses on the period for which comparable recent UCCS observations are available and examines current and expected spending, essential and non-essential expenditure, consumer confidence, inflation expectations, digital-payment growth and household financial saving. The evidence indicates a persistent positive sentiment towards overall and essential spending, while non-essential spending remains substantially weaker. At the same time, digital payments have expanded rapidly and household net financial saving has fallen from the exceptional pandemic-era level before recovering moderately. The findings are interpreted through mental accounting, present bias, payment salience and the behavioural life-cycle hypothesis. The study contributes by integrating official Indian secondary data with behavioural-finance theory and by distinguishing observable behavioural patterns from psychological mechanisms that would require primary survey data.
Authors: Ms. Apurva Iyer, Dr. Sambamurthy Padmavathi
Keywords: Behavioural Finance, Household Spending, Household Saving, Inflation Expectations, Consumer Confidence, Digital Payments, India.