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| Investors' Pro-sociality and Risky Investment |
| TANG Di, JIN Xingye
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PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University;
School of Economics, Central University of Finance and Economics |
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Abstract Previous studies generally assume that investors allocate their financial assets with the exclusive aim of maximizing their narrowly defined self-interest according to risk and return analysis, with no thought for society. However, this “economic man” hypothesis fails to take account of social changes or responsibility, as it assumes that society as a whole is static and that individuals need only comply with existing social norms when participating in transactions. In reality, however, society evolves dynamically, and all members of society participate and engage in the gradual change of social norms.
Any examination of the framework of investor behavior must therefore consider the interactions between members of society, and how individuals perceive these interactions. This means that we must account for the fact that investors' decision-making regarding risky assets is influenced by their pro-sociality. To do so, we must explore beyond self-interest.
Pro-sociality can be divided into three dimensions: social concerns, social trust, and social interaction. Our study uses social donation expenditure and gift expenditure as proxy variables to measure the level of pro-sociality. The more a household spends on social donation expenditure and gift expenditure, the higher the head of the household's level of pro-sociality. Then, we discuss the risk-taking willingness of investors and its relationship with pro-sociality.
Existing research regarding factors influencing household risky investment verifies that important individual factors include income level, demographic characteristics and health status, risk attitude, occupational risk, and property ratio. Our research aims to contribute to the literature on household investment behavior from the new perspective of pro-sociality.
Exploiting data from the 2012 and 2014 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we empirically analyze the impact of pro-sociality on household risky investment. Using the responses to relevant items in the CFPS, we construct a series of explained variables for household risky asset allocation. In addition to pro-sociality as the primary explanatory variable, we control for demographic characteristics (e.g., sex, age, physical health status), household characteristics (e.g., income level, household demographic structure), and province and year fixed effects.
The results show that the pro-sociality of household heads has a significant positive impact on household investment in risky financial assets. This effect remains significant after accounting for possible endogeneity problems.
Subsequently, we examine the robustness of our findings. First, we limit the sample to households with an increased level of pro-sociality in 2014. Second, we add extra variables that could reflect the level of risky investment by households. Third, we examine the impact of pro-sociality on the absolute and relative levels of risky investment. The regression results show that our conclusions are robust.
Finally, we examine whether the effect is heterogeneous across samples with different characteristics. According to the regression results, the pro-sociality of householders has a more significant impact on household risky investment in the non-agricultural household, Internet user, and risk-loving groups than in the agricultural household, non-Internet user, and risk-averse groups.
Our study contributes to the literature in two ways. (1) This study avoids using the traditional “economic man” assumption by investigating household risky investment from a novel perspective, namely that individuals' pro-sociality is naturally reflected in the process of responding to and promoting new social norms. (2) This study examines pro-sociality in three dimensions—social interaction, social trust, and social concerns—and uses social donations as a proxy variable to empirically analyze the impact of pro-sociality on household risky investment behavior, thus indirectly proving that the our construct of pro-sociality is meaningful.
The study has implications for government departments, as it shows that they should take account of the influence of pro-sociality on policy effectiveness when formulating policies concerning social responsible investment.
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Received: 20 May 2021
Published: 01 June 2022
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