The False Affordability Economy: How Instalment Credit Changes Consumer Decision-Making in America

Abstract

American consumer behavior is shaped by many different aspects. Some such aspects include modern installment credit and machine learning algorithms. The “False Affordability Economy” framework helps explain how online and digital payment methods can manipulate buyers, changing their perception of financial health. By conducting a systematic literature review and a case study, this re-search looks at how transparency in algorithms and data privacy can affect trust across the general population. The findings suggest that secretive processes are often a friction point among the people, impacting long-term trust, consumer sta-bility and repayment consistency negatively. An initiative of stricter oversight and improved standards of design and algorithmic transparency would help in the bat-tle against mass debt cycles. Such work would also help in bridging the gap be-tween innovation and the preservation of one’s financial health.