Gender, Ethnicity, and Religion and Investment Decisions: Malaysian Evidence

Abstract

This paper examines how the interaction between gender, religion, and ethnic differences influence the key determinants of individual investment behavior, which are different types of risk taking, luck, overconfidence, happiness, maximization, regret, and trust. We find that in gender-ethnic groups there are significant differences among Malaysian Malay and Malaysian Chinese but not among Malaysian Indian. With regard to gender-religion groups there are significant differences among Malaysian Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists but not among Malaysian Hindus. These gender-ethnic and gender-religion groups differ in range of variables such as luck, maximization, overconfidence, trust and risk. In addition, foreign students living in Malaysia were included in the study and we found that there is significant difference between male and females in term of luck and lifetime income risk.