Factors Influencing Investment Intentions

Financial markets frequently deviate from postulated efficiency, which is largely caused by the "irrationalities" of investors. This book contributes to the understanding of how investment strategies are driven by psychological forces. This study provides evidence on the occurrence and consequences of egocentric biases and also study provides a novel behavioral explanation for the equity home bias, an instance of internationally poorly diversified portfolios, based on social identity. The presented psychological phenomena can hardly be investigated with real financial market data. Hence, experimental methods are used to identify the fundamental cause-effect relationships in a controlled way. This book presents pieces of new evidence on decision making in the interdisciplinary field of economics, finance and psychology and provides insights into state-of-the-art experimental economics research.