Investigation of investor behaviors and perceptions in Islamic finance: A research on public employees

Increasing oil prices in the 1970s enabled the formation of a petro-dollar-rich Islamic segment. While western systems were damaged during the 2008 global crisis, the solid stance of the Islamic finance system attracted attention. The size of the Muslim population and the breadth of transaction volume in the world direct many Western institutions towards Islamic finance. In this context, Islamic finance, which is the application of Islamic principles in economics, banking, insurance, investment funds, securities, etc. It is a sector that includes different fields and grows like a snowball with those who are included in the system day by day. In this study, it is aimed to reveal the effects of religiosity and Islamic financial literacy levels on the perception of investor behavior in Islamic finance and trust in the system through public employees with regular income. In this context, scales of perception of religiosity, perception of trust, perception of interest, perception of Islamic financial literacy, perception of Islamic finance and perception of Islamic financial promotion were prepared. The data collected through the survey from 1005 public employees in 81 provinces of Turkey between June and July 2024 were analyzed through SPSS and Mplus program. The Structural Equation Model, which includes 6 scales and gender, age, education and region of residence variables, was tested on 985 survey data. As a result of the analysis, it is seen that the perception of religiosity affects Islamic financial literacy and thus the individual investor's perception of trust in the Islamic finance sector is affected. It was concluded that male participants have higher levels of religiosity and Islamic financial literacy than female participants.