Abstract
In this paper, we examine the impact of emotions towards financial investments and emotions towards life in general on attitudes to financial risk using questionnaire data from 970 UK-based retail investors. We show that risk tolerance monotonically increases with positive emotions towards investments and life, and decreases with negative emotions. We incorporate a broader range of relevant emotions than in comparable existing studies, and we show, perhaps surprisingly, that positive emotions have a more substantial impact on risk tolerance than negative emotions. We find that emotions towards investments have a considerably greater explanatory power for the cross-section of risk aversion than gender, age, income, investment experience and investment knowledge. Our research sheds light on the different impacts that integral and background emotions have on retail investor financial decision-making. We suggest several implications for regulators and financial advisors, and we emphasise the importance for financial educators to support investors in developing emotional resilience.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 30 |
| Journal | International Journal of Finance and Economics |
| Volume | (2022) |
| Early online date | 18 Jan 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 18 Jan 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We are grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for funding this research under grant number ES/P000657/1. We would also like to thank an anonymous referee for useful comments on a previous version of this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Keywords
- attitude to risk
- emotions
- ertail investors
- risk aversion
- risk tolerance