When Digital Access Becomes Investment Capability: Financial Literacy and Portfolio Diversification Across Countries

This study tests whether macro-level conditions corresponding to economic, functional, emotional and social value explain cross-country variation in a digital investment adoption proxy, whether adoption is associated with a broader portfolio-diversification environment, and whether financial-literacy capacity strengthens that conversion.A five-wave panel covering 82 countries and 291 country-year observations is assembled for the 2011, 2014, 2017, 2021 and 2024 Global Findex waves using open World Bank Development Indicators and Global Findex series. Entropy-weighted composite indices are estimated in two-way country and year fixed-effects models with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors. K-means clustering, silhouette validation and ANOVA provide descriptive market typologies.Economic and social value-enabling conditions positively predict adoption, whereas functional and emotional proxies are negative in the within-country specification. Adoption is positively associated with diversification (β = 0.049, p = 0.008), and its interaction with financial-literacy capacity is positive (β = 0.088, p = 0.006). Cluster estimates require caution: the mature-market interaction has a larger point estimate but is statistically imprecise (p = 0.207), while the low-access estimate is smaller but significant.The paper moves beyond intention-based, single-country digital-banking studies by testing a macro analogue of perceived value, linking adoption to a consequential market outcome and identifying financial literacy as a conversion capability. It also shows where a simple monotonic transfer of micro perceived-value predictions fails under country fixed effects.