The relationship between the income and behavioural biases

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between the annual income earned by the investors and eight behavioural biases exhibited by the investors such as mental accounting, anchoring, gambler’s fallacy, availability, loss aversion, regret aversion, representativeness and overconfidence. Design/methodology/approach – The relationship is derived based on a questionnaire survey conducted on 436 secondary equity investors residing in Chennai, India. Findings – Analysis of variance test was performed on the normalised and non-normalised version of the biases divided in terms of the annual income earned by the investor. The test found that for the significant biases except the overconfidence bias, the investors with higher annual income were less prone to the biases when compared to investors with lower annual income. On the other hand, with respect to the overconfidence bias, the investors with higher annual income were prone to exhibit overconfidence bias when compared to the investors with lower annual income. Correlation analysis showed that the investors with high annual income were more likely to exhibit higher overconfidence bias but lower representativeness, loss aversion, availability and mental accounting biases. Originality/value – A contribution in the financial and economic front which would benefit the financial advisors to now consider the income earned by the clients as an important factor while giving financial advice to the clients and while guiding themabout the biases they are prone to exhibit. Proposito - El proposito de este documento es probar la relacion entre el ingreso anual ganado por los inversionistas y ocho sesgos de comportamiento exhibidos por los inversionistas como: contabilidad mental, anclaje, falacia del jugador, disponibilidad, aversion a la perdida, aversion al arrepentimiento, representatividad y exceso de confianza. Diseno/metodologia/enfoque - La relacion se deriva de una encuesta realizada a 436 inversores de capital secundario que residen en Chennai, India. Hallazgos - El analisis de la varianza se realizo en la version normalizada y no normalizada de los sesgos divididos en terminos de los ingresos anuales obtenidos por el inversionista. La prueba encontro que, para los sesgos significativos, excepto el sesgo de exceso de confianza, los inversores con ingresos anuales mas altos eran menos propensos a los sesgos en comparacion con los inversores con ingresos anuales mas bajos. Por otro lado, con respecto al sesgo de exceso de confianza, los inversionistas con ingresos anuales mas altos eran propensos a exhibir un sesgo de exceso de confianza en comparacion con los inversionistas con ingresos anuales mas bajos. El analisis de correlacion mostro que los inversionistas con altos ingresos anuales tenian mas probabilidades de exhibir un mayor sesgo de exceso de confianza, pero menor representatividad, aversion a las perdidas, disponibilidad y sesgos de contabilidad mental. Originalidad/valor - Una contribucion en el frente financiero y economico que beneficiaria a los asesores financieros al considerar ahora los ingresos obtenidos por los clientes como un factor importante, al tiempo que brinda asesoramiento financiero a los clientes y los guia sobre los sesgos que son propensos a exhibir.