Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance最新文献

Cybercrime increased dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic, when people’s online exposure rose significantly. In this paper, we analyze the relation between being a victim of online financial fraud and financial literacy, using representative Italian data collected in 2020. We find that basic financial knowledge is negatively associated with the probability of being defrauded online, while individuals who are overconfident about their level of financial literacy are more likely to fall victim to fraud. Moreover, those who were forced to work remotely because of the pandemic experienced a higher risk of fraud, that was reduced by financial literacy. Our findings suggest that financial literacy may provide protection against online fraud even in a context of high online exposure.

This paper analyzes how financial literacy and the perception of own eccentricity in pension preferences relates to citizens’ desire to make own choices or to delegate these to the government. It also considers how these factors relate to what regulation citizens want for their co-citizens, and to what extent the regulation they want for themselves relates to the regulation they want for others. We find that respondents with more financial knowledge want less government regulation. Furthermore, those that perceive themselves as having different preferences than the average population want less government regulation. The amount of regulation that respondents want for themselves is highly correlated with what they want for others. However, some respondents hold different preferences for themselves than for others. Specifically, those that want less government regulation for themselves and have more financial knowledge want, on average, more government regulation for others.

This study delves into the impact of gamification usage on the customer relationship management performance of microfinance platforms in China. Specifically, we systematically investigate the positive and negative perceptions influencing gamification adoption, which in turn affect satisfaction, customer engagement, and retention. Our results show that perceived benefit positively influences gamification usage intention, whereas perceived sacrifice exerts a negative impact. Furthermore, gamification usage intention correlates positively with satisfaction, customer engagement, and retention. Finally, the study highlights the positive relationships between satisfaction and customer engagement, as well as between customer engagement and retention. However, no significant relationship is observed between customer satisfaction and customer retention. These insights offer essential implications for enhancing user experiences and fostering customer loyalty.

This study builds on the seminal work of Tversky and Kahneman (1974), exploring the presence and extent of anchoring bias in forecasts generated by four Large Language Models (LLMs): GPT-4, Claude 2, Gemini Pro and GPT-3.5. In contrast to recent findings of advanced reasoning capabilities in LLMs, our randomised controlled trials reveal the presence of anchoring bias across all models: forecasts are significantly influenced by prior mention of high or low values. We examine two mitigation prompting strategies, ‘Chain of Thought’ and ‘ignore previous’, finding limited and varying degrees of effectiveness. Our results extend the anchoring bias research in finance beyond human decision-making to encompass LLMs, highlighting the importance of deliberate and informed prompting in AI forecasting in both ad hoc LLM use and in crafting few-shot examples.

This paper evaluates how Chinese stocks respond to the onboarding of China-focused ESG scores on the Bloomberg Professional Terminal in the short term. By utilizing the event study approach, we find that the top 10 % of ESG-rated stocks react significantly positively to the onboarding event, whereas the bottom 10 % of ESG-rated stocks experience significant and negative cumulative average abnormal returns. Moreover, this effect is asymmetric in that the negative returns have a greater and more prominent magnitude than the positive returns. By comparing the cross-sectional data results before and after the rating event, we propose several channels through which these effects may function. The findings of this study also have economic and policy implications for investors and policy-makers.

We explore the relationship dynamics between individual’s financial literacy and objective-oriented investment behaviour (OOIB) using the survey data from 686 investors in Pakistan. Drawing impetus from the social cognitive theory, we find that financial literacy significantly influences OOIB, which is subject to the individual’s belief in his/her capacity to manage their own investment portfolio (financial self-efficacy). However, we do not find the hypothesized moderating effect of financial risk attitude on the nexus between financial self-efficacy and OOIB. Our research indicates that factors such as gender, age, education, occupation, income level, and investment experience have a considerable impact on individual's confidence and risk-taking propensity in achieving financial goals. These findings provide valuable insights for policymakers and government bodies aiming to address financial concerns and develop prudent investment policies in an environment influenced by religious sentiments.

We use a unique dataset of pension participants in Turkey to evaluate the effectiveness of a risk questionnaire developed by the regulatory authority. Our analysis includes a reliability assessment (Cronbach’s $\alpha =0.73$) and a factor analysis that reveals two latent constructs: risk attitude and financial situation/literacy. Although both factors show a significant positive relationship with participants’ portfolio risk, the overall explanatory power remains low, with an $R^2$ of 0.134. Comparing these factors in terms of their contribution to predictive validity, we demonstrate that the risk attitude factor—formed from questions directly addressing financial risk-taking—exhibits significantly greater predictive power than the financial situation/literacy factor, which pertains to questions about the financial situation and self-assessed financial literacy. Our results imply that demographic factors like gender, education level, marital status, and age show weak predictive power for portfolio risk, suggesting that observed behavior in risky choices is more influenced by domain-specific attitudes.

The literature on impression management has identified three main types of graph manipulation: presentation enhancement, selectivity, and distortion. Nevertheless, no paper has analyzed the combined impact of all three techniques. Through an experiment involving 1701 certified public accountants, participants were exposed to graphs featuring all three manipulation techniques using distinct colors (blue, black, and red), all juxtaposed against graphs with no manipulation or a singular manipulation type. Our results show that selectivity alone has the same impact as distortion, selectivity, and presentation enhancement combined. Additional results demonstrate that the choice of color (blue versus red) in presentation enhancement, when combined with measurement distortion and selectivity, impact participants' perception differently. However, this effect is not observed when colorblind professionals are included.

In this paper, we conduct a stated-choice experiment with German retail investors to examine how labeling sustainability information as financially material or immaterial influences investment decisions. Results reveal a strong non-pecuniary preference for sustainability. However, emotional affect leads some investors to erroneously project sustainability information onto firms’ financial performance, regardless of financial materiality. When poor sustainability ratings are labeled as financially material, investors demand further an additional return premium, indicating a misinterpretation of these labels as financial indicators. This bias is particularly evident among investors who incorporate sustainability for pecuniary reasons in the experiment but do not use such information in real-life investing. Our findings suggest that while sustainability labels can guide investor behavior, they also risk distorting financial expectations. This underscores the need for careful design in sustainability disclosure practices and better investor education on the implications of sustainability information.