Effect of Demographic Factors and Awareness on Investment Behaviour in Stock Market: Evidence from West Bengal

Abstract

The objective of the study is to know the effect of two independent variables namely Demographic Factors and Awareness on the only dependent variable namely Investment Behaviour of individual investors of stock market. The study has been done analysing primary data that have been collected from 377 randomly selected individual investors of stock market from three districts of West Bengal namely Purulia, Bankura and Paschim Medinipur using a structured questionnaire. The major findings of descriptive statistics, Cronbach Alpha, Factor Analysis, Correlation Coefficient and Probit Regression Model using SPSS and Stata Softwares indicate that people of ages between 28 years to 37 years invest more in the stock market. Most of the investors in the stock market are educated and graduate in academic qualification. In occupational perspective most of the investors are businessperson. In case of annual income most are in the band of Rs. 100000 to Rs. 500000 and most of the individual investors are experienced in this field as they are making investment in stock market for more than five years and the objective of most of the investors is to make short term profit. The awareness levels of the individual investors are on moderate level and they rely more on financial awareness in comparison to social learning. Herding Bias of Investment Behaviour is not so strong in comparison to Heuristics Bias, Prospects Bias and Markets Bias of Investment Behaviour in stock market. The study finally concludes that there exists a significant effect of Demographic Factors and Awareness on Investment Behaviour of individual investors of stock market.