A field study on the investment perspective and investment preferences of individual investors during the pandemic

The field of behavioral finance, which emerged as a result of the combination of scientific fields such as psychology and sociology with the science of finance, has brought to the agenda that the economic person, who is purified from the emotions in traditional finance theories, is actually affected by emotions, thoughts and prejudices and exhibits irrational behaviors in the investment process. In this context, in our study; By mentioning the concept of investment, investment and investor types, the foundations and historical development of behavioral finance, the cognitive and psychological biases that individual investors are affected by in their investment decision processes have been tried to be explained. In the last part, field research was conducted and a survey was applied to 397 individual investors, and SPSS 25.0 program and LISREL 8.7 program were used to reach the findings of the research. 95% confidence level was used for the analysis of the research and the following analyzes were made. • Frequency and percentage analysis was performed to determine demographic characteristics. • To determine the reliability of the scale, Cronbach's alpha analysis, which measures internal consistency, and item-scale correlation were performed. To examine the validity, first explanatory factor analysis and then confirmatory factor analysis with LISREL.87 were performed. • To examine the participants' levels of measurement tools, mean±s.s. was given from descriptive analyses. • To examine the distribution of the data, the mean and median values of the central tendency measures were examined, while the kurtosis and skewness values of the measurement tools were examined. • Pearson correlation analysis was performed to determine whether there is a relationship between the variables, and if so, the strength and direction of this relationship. • To examine the difference between the levels obtained from the measurements according to demographic variables, independent sample t-test was used for demographic variables with two groups, and one-way ANOVA analysis was performed for demographic variables with more than two groups. As a result of the survey, individual investors' conservatism tendency, loss aversion tendency, overconfidence, conservatism, overoptimism and representation tendencies were measured.