Influence of Demographic Characteristics on Investment Decisions- Study of Behavioral Biases in College and University Teachers of Punjab

Abstract

The present paper aims to study how the demographic characteristics of the respondents, College and University Teachers in Punjab, have an influence on their investment decisions by having an impact on their behavioral biases. Primary data from college and university teachers of Punjab has been collected through a mailed questionnaire. The findings revealed that there is a presence of behavioral biases amongst the respondents of the study. However, the effect of the demographic characteristics on behavioral biases was significant in only few of the behavioral biases taken as independent variables in the study. ANOVA was applied to test the significance of demographic characteristics on the behavior of investors while making investment decisions. The study has four dependent variables i.e. age, gender, designation and years of experience and eight independent variables which are behavioral biases namely herding  bias, home bias, anchoring bias, representative bias, overconfidence bias, gambler’s fallacy bias, hindsight bias and confirmation bias. Where the results turned out to be significant, Post Hoc Analysis was applied to test the specificity of the significance of the dependent variables.