I feel shame, but i must survive: A scoping review of widows’ psychological experiences of repaying husbands’ online loan debt after spousal death

The rapid expansion of online lending has created new household vulnerabilities, particularly when a husband’s sudden death leaves digital debt to be managed by the wife. In these situations, widows navigate not only bereavement but also financial strain, moral expectations, and layered shame. Although grief and economic hardship have been widely examined separately, little research has systematically mapped widows’ psychological experiences in the context of online loan debt after spousal loss. This scoping review explores how the literature conceptualizes widows’ psychological experiences of carrying digital debt, focusing on grief, shame, and survival strategies. A systematic search across multidisciplinary databases followed the Arksey and O’Malley framework. Findings were synthesized using narrative and thematic approaches to identify conceptual patterns. Results show digital debt acts as a secondary stressor that complicates adaptation to loss and shapes shame as a relational experience. Survival appears as a negotiation of meaning, identity, and agency within vulnerability.