Investor information search

• Published in: Journal of economic psychology 2009-02, Vol.30 (1), p.24-41
• Main Authors: Loibl, Cäzilia, Hira, Tahira K.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Cluster analysis; Earnings; Economic psychology; Economic theory; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Information; Information acquisition; Information search; Information search Investments Involvement; Information sources; Investment; Investment decision; Investments; Investors; Involvement; Miscellaneous; Psychological aspects; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Studies
• ISSN: 0167-4870; 1872-7719
• DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2008.07.009

Few will disagree that information search is essential in making investment decisions, a high-consequence decision task. Yet, the sources of investor information have never been used as a segmentation base to study investment behavior. We analyze survey results of investors in the US using information search, demographic, psychological, and involvement variables. Cluster analysis shows five typologies for investor information search based on sources of information. We also discover the majority of investors perform moderate- to low-information gathering strategies. The 11 demographics variables were insufficient to describe the typologies, although we did find higher-educated male investors with higher earnings more likely to practice a high-information search strategy, confirming previous studies. Turning to the psychological and involvement variables, we develop distinct typologies and identify several significant predictors for the five investor groups. For the majority of investors, investment decisions present a considerable and unwillingly undertaken challenge, and this study concludes with a discussion of how to target these investor typologies with approaches grounded in behavior-change theory.