This study seeks to examine the impact of the personalized projection of pension savings on retirement saving behavior, perceived savings adequacy, and financial preparation for old age among Hong Kong workers.

A growing body of literature has demonstrated the importance of financial preparation for old age, especially in Hong Kong, where rates of poverty in old age are high and the population will age rapidly in the coming decades. Previous retirement preparation intervention studies suffer several major shortcomings in their design, such as lack of a control, non-representative samples, small sample size, invalid measures, short follow-up assessment, and lack of a theoretical basis. On the other hand, while a few recent studies have shown that personalized pension projection boosts workers’ retirement savings, the psychological outcomes, such as perceived savings adequacy, have not been assessed. Based on these lessons, this study seeks to examine the impact of the personalized projection of pension savings on retirement saving behavior, perceived savings adequacy, and financial preparation for old age among Hong Kong workers. Using a sample of 343 workers, we will develop a two-month intervention based on the interdisciplinary financial planning model and we will adopt a randomized experimental design with an active control group, identify a representative sample of workers by random sampling, use reliable and valid scales to measure outcomes including the amount of retirement savings, and administrate one-year and two-year follow-up assessments after the completion of the intervention. To strengthen the effect of this personalized information in magnitude and duration, we will also present participants with the discrepancy of the projected income and expenditure during retirement. Moreover, we will investigate whether the effect of this personalized information on our outcome measures is mediated through future time orientation, time discounting behavior, and retirement goal clarity. The proposed study is a 26-month randomized experiment in which the participants, working adults aged between 35 and 55 years, will be assigned within a three-arm design to receive either a personalized projected retirement savings intervention or a personalized projection of retirement savings with estimation of discrepancy replacement rate, or to active control condition. To assess the effectiveness of the intervention, we will measure the amount of voluntary contribution to the Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) and private retirement savings, perceived savings adequacy, and financial preparation for old age. The findings of this proposed study will not only make a strong contribution to the theoretical framework of financial preparation for old age, but also offer useful insights able to inform social policy and measures in Hong Kong by providing a cost-effective intervention to improve financial preparation for old age.