Economic environment and personality: How do they influence investment decisions and regrets?

In the study the ways that economic environment and personality influence investment decision making are investigated with an emphasis on the experience of regret. Eighty-four Chinese college students completed an investment questionnaire and NEO-FFI (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Results indicated that the environment mainly affects willingness to invest. Participants exhibited a strong desire to save their money when the macroeconomic situation was pessimistic; in an optimistic environment more money was invested. It was also found that personality influences investment-related regret more than does environment. Those with a higher level of neuroticism were found to experience more regret than those lower in neuroticism, when faced with a wrong investment decision.