EFFECT OF TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES ON RETIREMENT PREPAREDNESS: A CASE OF PUBLIC PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS’ IN NAROK COUNTY, KENYA

Abstract

Public primary school teachers’ in Narok County, Kenya, face severe financial unpreparedness for retirement due to entrenched economic, behavioral, and institutional barriers that are particularly acute in this marginalized, largely rural and pastoralist region. The purpose of this study was to establish the effect of teachers’, attitude on retirement preparedness in public primary school teachers’ in Narok county. The study focused on four variables: teachers’ materialism attitude; teachers’ attitudes towards the future; teachers’ attitudes towards planning teachers’ saving attitude. The study was guided by behavioural and economic theory of planned behaviour. The research methodology comprised of an explanatory research design, a target population of 375 public primary school teachers’ and a sample of 148 teachers. The study adopted a simple random sampling technique and questionnaires for data collection. The study analysed research data using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Attitude towards Materialism revealed a significant positive effect on retirement preparedness (β=.122, p=.026); Attitude towards the Future showed a significant positive contribution to retirement preparedness (β=.148, p=.016); Attitude to planning showed a positive influence on retirement preparedness (β=.128, p=.020) and saving attitude was confirmed as the most influential predictor of retirement preparedness (β=.354, p<.001). Findings provide teachers with insights into how their mind-set toward savings, investment, and pension reliance can affect their future financial security. Lastly, findings offer a psychological and sociological perspective that can inspire further research on how personal beliefs shape financial decision-making. The study findings provide valuable insights into how attitudes affect retirement outcomes and highlight the need for targeted interventions. The study provides new insights by demonstrating that teachers’ retirement preparedness in Narok County is driven more by behavioural attitudes than by demographic or economic factors alone. It reveals that saving attitude, previously underexamined in rural contexts, is the most powerful predictor of retirement readiness, highlighting a critical behavioural gap. The findings also introduce fresh knowledge by showing that future orientation, planning behaviour, and materialism attitudes significantly shape long-term financial decisions among teachers. These results extend behavioural economic theories by confirming that psychological factors are central to retirement outcomes in marginalized and pastoralist regions.