Attention of women's liberation and investor herding behavior

Abstract

In recent decades, the women's liberation movement is garnering attention on a global scale. To investigate the impact of women's liberation attention on herding behavior among male and female investors in the stock market, we obtain a unique account-level data set of retail investor transactions in the Chinese stock market. Our results document that investors in Chinese cities with higher women's liberation attention demonstrate less herding behavior than other investors. Moreover, by facilitating investors' confidence and risk tolerance, women's liberation attention indirectly reduces herding behaviors. Our results remain solid in robustness tests, and additional tests confirm that women's liberation attention helps narrow the gender gap in herding behavior. Moreover, women's liberation attention is particularly significant in reducing investor herding behavior under volatile market conditions. Our paper contributes to the studies of gender equality in the stock market and provides empirical evidence by using account-level data.