Gender differences have become an important issue in social sciences research. As the social status of women rises with higher education and disposable income, their behavior as consumers and investors is becoming more valued. Consequently, studies done on gender differences have become more popular. Previous studies on gender differences in investment or financial issues have focused on whether females are more risk aversive than men, on differences in investment strategy confidence, and differences in information processing in the decision-making process. In the past, studies done on gender differences in investments and financial issues have mostly indicated that women are more risk aversive than men; investments with lower risks involved were often preferred by women (Bajtelsmit, Bernasek, & Jianakopolos, 1999; Bernasek & Shwiff, 2001; Bajtelsmit & VanDerhei, 1997; Jianakoplos & Bernasek, 1998; Schubert, 2006;
Sunden & Surette, 1998), while males have more confidence in investment decisions.
When it comes to decision making, women tend to put more factors into consideration than men do before taking any action (Chung & Monroe, 2001; Graham, J., Stendardi, Myers, & Graham M., 2002).
In uncertain circumstances, individuals’ decisions are subject to the impact of many
emotional reactions are generally considered to be the primary factors in irrationality (Maital, Filer, & Simon, 1986; Shefrin, 2001). Previous research has generally concluded that males appear to be more confident than females, even to the point of overconfidence (Barber & Odean, 2001). Scholars have proposed reasons such as that risk attitudes are impacted by the social role played by the individual in question. Other scholars have suggested that the confidence of females is determined by the certainty of decision results;
more uncertain results lead to less confidence in females.
Other scholars have suggested that the comparatively risk-averse decisions made by females may not be the result of differences in risk attitudes, but may instead be caused by differences in information processing. Females tend to process broad amounts of information and will incorporate uncertain cue information, thereby exhibiting risk aversion. Males tend towards simplified heuristics in the decision-making process and are more prone to be more careless in accepting information; females will make detailed considerations of all usable clues. Scholars suggest that females will use all available clues and information and are more suited to the processing of broad information; they also have more positive evaluations of uncertain information, so it appears that women are more risk-averse than are men.
Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, & Welch (2001) indicated the attitudes in gender
difference towards risk are caused by emotional fluctuation. People are more optimistic when they are in good moods and are more pessimistic when they are in bad moods;
consequently, moods may influence the probability of individuals investing in risky assets. Schubert (2006) noted that risk assessment and behaviors are typically impacted by cognitive and emotional responses, and emotional responses typically have a stronger impact on attitude and behavior than do cognitive responses. Consequently, the mood of a decision-maker and the time of decision will have an impact on decision selection.
Mood is affected by the state of the economy, unemployment rate, and inflation, which can affect individuals’ decisions on purchases and investments. Nofsinger (2005) suggested that social mood is a strong factor in decision making for the investors, controlling the atmosphere of financial and economic activities. If there is a high degree of optimism in a society, then more optimistic investors will be produced, which will influence the views of decision-makers on risk and uncertainty. Consequently, many investors will purchase stocks and more companies will become publicly traded, leading to excessive market transactions. If social emotions become excessively high, extreme overconfidence and excitement will lead to the bursting of the market bubble. As such, the stock market itself is an indicator of social mood. Wurgler (2002) emphasized that
trading volume or market activities. (Mitchell & Mulherin, 1994； Antweiler & Frank, 2004) Jocobsen, Lee and Marquering (2008) studied the optimism levels of men and women by using consumer confidence data of 18 different country, they reported men are strikingly more optimistic than women about the future performance of key economic and financial indicators. . They suggested the severity of risk aversion may be influenced by the differences in optimism level between men and women. The consumer confidence index is a direct investigation, involving random sampling and the use of set questions to track changes in consumer confidence; the consumer confidence index has the advantage of directly exploring the intentions of people involved. However, sampling subjects may not have considered economic problems in depth, and set questions make it more difficult for respondents to express their views on economic incidents occurring at the time of investigation.
This study emphasizes the confirmation of whether females are more pessimistic than males with regard to expectations of specific economic incidents and, when influenced by social emotions, whether there are differences in the optimism or pessimism of males and females towards specific economic incidents. The data in this study was obtained from the most popular investment portal site in Taiwan – Yahoo!
Kimo Taiwan Business News Poll Centre. Data was collected from June 2006 to the 1st quarter of 2009, by an internet survey on financial and related issues. The objective of the
study was to identify the difference in reactions between men and women for positive and negative financial events.
Yahoo! Kimo Taiwan is a popular portal site with a significant number of voting users. Finance-related discussions were particularly popular at the time of data collection;
numerous “optimistic and pessimistic contexts” were included in the study. The advantages of using data collected from Yahoo! Kimo Taiwan included: realistic financial issue discussion, close connection to daily experience, voters were frequent internet users that paid attention on financial news with social mood being somehow affected by media and internet news, large quantity of samples, and people who voted were the ones that had thought about the topics and issues already. Data collected from the aforementioned samples are very valuable in terms of testing whether women possess a more pessimistic view on certain financial events than men. Results supported the hypothesis and are consistent with the results from Jacobsen’s (2008) study, showing that women are indeed more pessimistic than men when the social mood is gloomy. However, when social emotion is optimistic, the responses of both genders are determined by the target investment. If the investment target is stocks, then female investors exhibit more pessimism than males; for non-stock investment targets, when the social emotion is
conclusions of previous research which suggest than women are more pessimistic than men.
Results of this study show the difference in attitude between men and women on financial topics, which come from the analysis of data from subjective internet surveys.
The results also explain why women are more conservative in financial and investment decisions, which can serve as a reference to policy makers and the business world.
However, because the sample consisted of internet users, there may be limitations due to generalization of the results. The following paragraphs of this paper are arranged as follows: examines relevant literature, describes the research method, compiles the results obtained from research, and the final chapter discusses results and provides suggestions for future research.