Effect of Individual Differences and Social Network Sites Addiction on Behavioural Biases in the Context of Financial Decision-Making: an Experimental Investigation

Individual differences have been neglected in financial decision-making research on behavioural biases. The prior research in this area is primarily based on laboratory experiments using a small sample of a single group of individuals, such as students. This study comprehensively analyses how people with different demographic and psychometric characteristics and Social Network Sites Addiction (SNSA) function when making financial decisions in a developed (Australia) and developing (Sri Lanka) country. Firstly, the study focuses on whether there is any difference between the two countries with reference to their behavioural biases. Secondly, it examines the association between behavioural biases and individual characteristics. Thirdly, the study analyses the moderating effect of Social Network Sites Addiction (SNSA) on the relationship between individual characteristics and behavioural biases in financial decision-making. The data for the study was collected from an experiment-based questionnaire issued to over 5,000 individuals aged 18 years and above, living in Australia and Sri Lanka. The study collected 1,979 valid responses with a response rate of 38.6%. This study considered three demographic characteristics (gender, age, occupation) and nine psychometric characteristics (education, work experience, cognitive ability and personality—openness, extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness and agreeableness) as independent variables. Three behavioural biases—loss aversion, framing, and endowment—were considered to be the dependent variable while the Social Network Sites Addiction served as the study’s moderating variable. The data collected were analysed using Chi-square and binary logistics regression procedures using Rstudio.