风险态度与股票投资

Risk Attitude and Stock Market Investment

基于2007年中国15城市居民投资行为调查数据,本文发现,居民的风险态度对其是否投资股票没有显著影响,这与已有西方文献的有关发现截然不同。我们提出了一个新的理论解释:社会互动可以不同程度地降低居民对股票投资风险的主观感知程度,这使得居民风险态度在解释其是否投资股票时不再显著。细分样本的回归发现和统计检验显示:社会互动程度较低的居民其绝对风险规避程度显著反向影响着他投资股票的可能,而社会互动程度较高的居民其绝对风险规避程度对他是否投资股票没有显著影响;风险态度的影响在样本间存在着显著差异。这支持了我们的理论解释。本文的政策涵义在于:根据社会互动程度对股民针对性地进行风险教育,使其认识到自己在大众参与股市时对风险的麻痹意识,这是促进股票市场持续健康发展和增进投资者福利的政府政策需要深入考虑的。

Based on a survey of Chinese urban resident investment behaviour in 15 cities in 2007, we find that for Chinese people taken as a whole, their risk attitudes have no significant effect on their stock investment probability, which is totally different from those findings from western literature. We propose a new theoretical explanation： since different levels of social interaction could reduce the subjective estimation of an investor＇s feeling on stock investment risk to different extents, his risk attitude could not significantly explain whether he will invest in stock or not. According to both regression results and statistical tests from two subsamples, we observe the absolute risk aversion of people with a lower social interaction level significantly reduces their stock investment probability, while the risk attitudes of people with a higher social interaction level have no significant effect. Moreover, there exists statistically significant difference between the influences of risk attitudes from two sub-samples with different social interaction levels. These findings have important policy implications. Government policies should pay more attention to the risk education on different groups of individual investors according to their social interaction levels and hence change their insensitiveness to investment risk under mass stock market participation conditions. By doing this, government could promote both the healthy development of Chinese stock market and individual investors＇ welfare.