The investigation of individuals' financial decisions in behavioral finance perspective: A study of gender differences in investment decision-making

Behavioural finance as a new perspective to finance is based on the role of psychology on investors' financial behavior and decision-making process, according to this perspective, the assumption of traditional finance which is based on making financial decisions rationally by investors is rejected, behavioural finance explains investment decisions of individual investors are not rationally always because they are influenced by psychological and behavioural biases, that make errors in their investment decisions. Gender difference in investment is an expanding and important research area in behavioral finance. According to some of past researches males and females behave differently in some of their decisions, and accordingly investment decisions. Here, in this study, the relationship between behavioral finance biases and gender differences is investigated. The gender difference is independent variable and behavioral finance biases are dependent variables. Behavioral finance factors are divided into two parts which are emotional and cognitive biases. And they are measured by several dimensions to achieve the results. The data are collected by questionnaire. The population of the study is individuals investors in stock market in Adana province and the sample size is 400 individuals who invest in stocks. The collected data was analyzed by SPSS program. The achieved results show behavioral finance factors influence in decision-making and there is a relationship between gender and some of these factors.