Understanding the Decision-making of Retail Investors

散户投资者的财务规划和投资充满了许多困难，而且还在不断增加。有很多证据表明，他们做出的选择往往是不恰当的，部分原因是他们对金融产品和特定术语缺乏了解。在英国，许多散户投资者会获得独立的金融建议，以帮助他们做出决策，但激发他们的风险偏好程度从而提出投资建议的过程受到了监管机构和学术研究的批评；存在这样的危险：它可能无法向客户提供最合适的金融产品。这项拟议的计划旨在对散户投资者的财务决策过程进行全面和广泛的调查，这不仅有助于了解如何以及为什么作出投资选择的学术文献，而且还将为风险分析和金融信息的呈现提供实用的政策建议。我们将访问两个独特的数据库，其中包括超过10万名散户投资者对所选投资的心理风险描述问卷的反应以及他们的人口统计/生活方式数据，这些数据将从多个角度进行分析，以确定这一过程的连贯性如何，以及问卷回答在多大程度上已经反映了客户的损失能力。我们将在财务咨询过程中评估不同的数据表示方法和不同的术语对所选投资的影响。例如，现在IFA通常通过波动性和在险价值来解释风险，后者根据历史数据显示，在给定的期限内，以给定的概率，客户可能会损失多少。然而，无论信息是以收益情景还是以损失情景呈现的，都已被证明会影响决策，特别是个人寻求风险和规避风险的战略。总体而言，我们预计这些因素可能会影响个人的决策过程，特别是在金融知识更多/更少的散户投资者、不同程度的兴奋或焦虑以及财富、性别、教育和年龄等人口统计因素的情况下。这方面的研究将使我们能够阐明通过考虑客户的生活方式愿望来确定适当的投资产品可能产生的影响(即，他们想要实现什么，以及他们应该以什么方式投资，以期实现这些目标？)而不是基于他们承担风险的意愿。更广泛地说，我们将放弃心理测量问卷方法和信息的视觉呈现，以考虑围绕财务决策过程的更广泛环境对其结果的影响。这将包括对偶然情绪和整体情绪对决策过程和结果的影响的审查。在金融决策的背景下，散户投资者可能感受到的整体情绪与决策本身引起的兴奋和/或焦虑有关。例如，已经证明，恐惧的人更厌恶风险，而愤怒的人更喜欢冒险。另一方面，附带情绪是与决定无关的情绪，但从以前的情况中延续下来。例如，如果散户投资者在与顾问的约会中有令人沮丧的动力，或者在国内发生争执，他们可以被带到决策场景中，并在做出决策时得到体验。有初步证据表明，附带情绪和整体情绪都会影响投资决策，但尚未对这两种情绪及其与认知偏差的交互作用对散户投资者决策过程的影响进行系统调查。

Financial planning and investment by retail investors is fraught with many and increasing difficulties. There is much evidence that the choices they make are often inappropriate, partly due to their poor knowledge of financial products and the specific terminologies. In the UK, many retail investors obtain independent financial advice to assist their decision-making but the process of eliciting their degree of risk appetite leading to investment recommendations has been criticised by regulators and in academic research; there are dangers it may not deliver clients the most appropriate financial products. The proposed project aims to undertake a comprehensive and wide-ranging investigation of the financial decision-making process of retail investors which will not only contribute to the academic literature on the understanding of how and why investment choices are made, but will also provide practical policy recommendations for risk profiling and the presentation of financial information.We will have access to two unique databases of the responses of more than 100,000 retail investors to psychometric risk profiling questionnaires with the chosen investments and their demographic/lifestyle data which will be analysed from a number of perspectives with the aim of determining how coherent the process is and the extent to which questionnaire responses already incorporate clients' capacities for loss. We will evaluate, within the financial advisory process, the impacts of differing methods of data presentation and different terminologies on the investments chosen. For instance, it is now common for IFAs to explain risk via volatility and value-at-risk, which shows, based on historical data, how much the customer is likely to lose with a given probability over a given horizon. However, whether information is presented in a gain or loss scenario has been shown to impact decision-making and in particular risk-seeking and risk-avoidance strategies by individuals. Collectively, we anticipate that these factors may impact the decision-making process of individuals, in particular under conditions of more/less financially knowledgeable retail investors, different levels of excitement or anxiety and across demographic factors such as wealth, gender, education, and age. This aspect of the research will enable us to shed light on the likely impact of determining appropriate investment products via a consideration of the client's lifestyle aspirations (i.e., what do they want to achieve and in what way should they invest in order to expect to meet these goals?) rather than based on their willingness to bear risk.More broadly, we will step back from the psychometric questionnaire approach and visual presentation of information to consider the impact of the wider circumstances surrounding the financial decision-making process on its outcomes. This will include an examination of the effects of incidental and integral emotions on the decision-making process and outcomes. In the context of financial decision-making, integral emotions that are likely to be felt by retail investors relate to excitement and/or anxiety caused by the decision itself. For example, it has been demonstrated that fearful individuals are more risk-averse, while angry individuals are more risk-seeking. Incidental emotions, on the other hand, are emotions that are unrelated to the decision specifically, but are carried over from previous situations. For example, if a retail investor had a frustrating drive to their appointment with the advisor, or an argument at home, they can be brought to the decision-making scenario and are experienced as the decision is made. There is preliminary evidence that both incidental and integral emotions can influence investment decisions, but a systematic investigation of the impact of both these types of emotions and their interaction with cognitive biases on the decision-making process of retail investors has not been conducted.