An Integrative Model of Media, Psychosocial Mediation, and Social Legitimation in Rural Financial Literacy: A Case Study of an Indonesian Forest Farmers Group

Abstract

Despite the expansion of mass and digital media into rural areas of emerging economies, financial literacy gaps between urban and rural populations persist. This study examines how integrating media exposure and psychosocial factors shapes financial literacy in rural Indonesia through a development communication lens. Using a qualitative instrumental case study, we conducted five in-depth interviews with the chair of a Forest Farmers Group (Kelompok Tani Hutan) in Sukajaya village, Bogor Regency, who has led the group for five years, complemented by three months of participant observation and document analysis of group cash records, meeting minutes, and WhatsApp exchanges. Reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke) yielded three principal findings. First, rural communities access financial information through four stratified channel layers: mass media, digital media, interpersonal channels, and traditional collective channels, with influence increasing as channels become more relational. Second, five psychosocial factors, financial self-efficacy, trust, social and gender norms, religious values, and social capital, operate as mediators that determine whether information is translated into behavior. Third, three integrative pathways emerge: mass media as an awareness trigger, community figures as a trust filter, and collective spaces as learning laboratories in which financial information undergoes processes of social legitimation before influencing behavior.We synthesize these findings into a four- layered Integrative Model—context, channels, mediators, and outcomes—with a feedback loop. The model challenges the linear "exposure-equals-literacy" assumption that underpins many financial literacy interventions, positions interpersonal and traditional channels as primary rather than supplementary, and offers concrete guidance for designing context-sensitive rural
financial literacy programs in Southeast Asia.