Self-Reported Health Effects of Cashless Economic Policy Among Undergraduate Students of the University of Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria

Abstract

Context: Economic policy transitions can produce unintended public-health consequences when implementation outpaces social, financial and technological readiness. Undergraduates, just like others citizens of the country had their share of “shock” and challenges. They adopted several coping mechanisms just not to allow the new cashless policy disrupt their learning processes.

Objective: This study assessed the self-reported health effects of cashless economic policy among undergraduate students of the University of Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria.

Methods and materials: A descriptive cross-sectional study design was adopted. Multistage sampling was used to select 427 consenting participants for the study. Semi-structured self-administered pretested questionnaire were used for data collection.

Results: The respondents had a mean age of 22.46 ± 3.88 years; Most, (73.5%) of the respondents were aged 20–29 years, and 57.8% were males. Although knowledge of cashless economic policy was generally high, with 68.4% of the respondents reporting good knowledge, self-reported health effects were common. Psychological stress was the most frequently reported effect (69.7%), followed by headache (63.0%), anxiety (43.3%), sleeplessness (36.1%) and depression-related symptoms (35.3%). Among the 236 students who reported health effects, 46.1% described them as mild, 39.9% as moderate and 14.0% as severe. Most students did nothing to manage these effects (67.8%), while 22.4% used drugs obtained from pharmacists or chemists.

Conclusion: The findings show that cashless policy transitions may create measurable stress-related and somatic burdens among students when payment infrastructure, liquidity access and support services are inadequate. There should be health-sensitive implementation of financial digitization policies by the Federal Government of Nigeria.