社会互动与投资选择

个体的投资选择是否受到社会互动的影响?社会互动的作用机制是什么?采用2005年中国12城市投资者行为调查数据,本文发现,总体而言,社会互动推动了个体当前和未来期望对银行存款、外汇、股票、债券、期货、基金、借出、做生意、保险金、收藏品、房地产、理财产品、彩票等投资项目的参与。社会互动的积极作用主要是通过个体遵循参考群体成员的投资选择所体现的社会规范来实现的。此外,内生互动带来的感受交流和信息获得分别推动了个体当前对保险金和未来期望对债券的投资,而情景互动降低了个体未来参与股市的期望。

Social Interaction and Investment Choice

Does social interaction affect individual investment choice? If so, what are the mechanisms? Based on a individual investor survey in 12 cities in China in 2005, we find that overall social interaction promotes individual investors' participation in saving, foreign exchange, stock, bond, futures, mutual fund, lending, business, insurance, collection, real estate, wealth-managing product, and lottery, behind which is the social norm mechanism of social interaction. By investing in the same project as those currently chosen by most of his peer group members, an individual follows the social norm held by his peer members. Moreover, communication and social learning mechanisms of endogenous social interaction increase individual investors' current and future expected investment in insurance and bond respectively, while contextual social interaction reduces his future expected investment in stock. Our research provides a new policy angle of social interaction for China's economic reform and development. Improving social interaction, matching policies with social norms in the short term, and cultivating suitable social norms in the long term should be all taken into consideration by the government.