Exploring Retirement Planning Behavior among Male Employees in Sri Lanka’s Service Sector: The Role of Financial Literacy, Future Time Perspective, and Goal Clarity in the Western Province

The catastrophic economic crisis and rising poverty rates among the elderly population in Sri Lanka worsen the challenges surrounding retirement planning. These events have collapsed the economic stability and heightened the financial insecurities within the population, leading to decreased retirement preparedness. There is a dire need for studies to focus on individual-level factors of retirement planning behavior and therefore, this study delves into how financial literacy, future time perspective, and retirement goal clarity impacts the retirement planning behavior of male service sector employees in the Western province of Sri Lanka using Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and, Social Learning Theory (SLT). This study utilizes judgmental and snowball sampling methods with an established list of parameters and iterative inclusion of participants meeting these criteria, gathering 392 responses from self-administered questionnaires. A Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) approach was employed for the data analysis. The results revealed that both future time perspective and retirement goal clarity were found to have a significant positive relationship with retirement planning behavior while, financial literacy had no significant influence on retirement planning. Future research should consider adopting longitudinal study designs to comprehend the evolving thought processes, and behavioral patterns of service sector employees.