Impact Of Demographic Factors On Emotional Behavioral Biases Of The Individual Investors: Empirical Study On Indian Stock Market

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of demographic factors (Gender, age, marital status, educational qualification, occupation, investment experience) related to emotional behavioral biases of the individual (retail) investors of Indian stock market.

Design/methodology/approach

The study uses analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-test analysis to examine the survey data from more than 350 investors in India.

Findings

The results reveal the presence of different emotional behavioral biases including Loss Aversion Bias, Overconfidence Bias, Self-control Bias, Mental Accounting Bias and Herd Behavior Bias among Indian investors. Hence, the findings support the view that individual investors do act as irrational and individual investors are exposed to the behavioral biases. The results shows that martial status, educational qualification and investment experience has a impact on all the selected emotional behavioral biases, but no significant relation with the gender and age demographic variables to emotional behavioral biases.  

Research limitations/implications

The study may have implications for financial educated investors in promoting the financial awareness program for individuals. Investment advisors can potentially become more effective by understanding their clients’ decision-making processes in investment.

Originality/value

Despite an extensive literature on behavioral biases with reference to emotional biases, limited academic research attempts to unravel the association and effect of demographic factors on emotional behavioral biases. This study contributes to this literature by trying to fill this gap.