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Belonging to the financial technologies’ companies, equity-based crowdfunding platforms offer investors the opportunity to become shareholders through the purchase of small equity stakes of new innovative ventures. This paper aims to investigate gender-related differences in the behaviour of investors in firms seeking equity financing in Latin America.

Using a unique database, with combined information from different equity crowdfunding platforms in Brazil, Chile and Mexico, the authors study the population of 492 projects between 2013 and 2017. To analyse the relationship between investors’ gender-related differences and equity crowdfunding investment, this paper applies Poisson regression.

Results suggest that the probability that an investor finances a firm is based on gender bias. Investors prefer firms led by entrepreneurs that are similar to them in terms of gender. Furthermore, the authors find evidence that both female and male investors are risk-averse and are more likely to invest in the equity of firms that are older and offer a higher percentage of equity. However, female investors are associated with firms that are on average older and offer 0.02% more equity.

These findings have implications for crowdfunding platforms managers when selecting their target companies and policymakers when defining political actions to promote greater use of equity crowdfunding among female entrepreneurs and decrease barriers hindering women’s access to investment.

Unique in its proposition and data usage, this study sheds light on the relationship between investors and entrepreneurs in the Latin American equity crowdfunding market.

This paper aims to study gender differences in preferences for firm characteristics across various groups of investors in Malaysia.

Self-declared preferences are elicited through a survey of 520 investors comprising retail, financial professionals and institutional investors in the Malaysian stock market. Non-parametric (Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis) tests are computed to achieve the stated objective.

Results reveal that female investors display higher preferences for the liquidity of a firm, dividend payments, trading volume of a firm, stock price and firm’s age than male investors across investor’s groups.

Findings imply that the gender gap in investing behaviour can be partly attributed to gender differences in preferences for firm characteristics.

The findings suggest that the gender gap can be mitigated by giving more priority to the choices of female investors with respect to firm characteristics. In turn, this may reduce a part of the gender gap in investing. Moreover, the findings would assist companies to understand and know how their shareholder’s preferences vary with respect to gender and investor’s groups.

This paper provides evidence concerning the gender gap in investor’s self-declared preferences for firm characteristics across retail, financial professionals and institutional investors in Malaysia, which complements previous studies that used equity holdings data and only two groups of investors.

The venture capital industry is an important provider of capital to start-ups and has grown considerably in recent decades. This study explores how investors' gender perceptions influence venture capital investment decisions in an industry that remains highly gender imbalanced, both amongst the venture capital decision-makers and with respect to the allocation of capital to entrepreneurs.

The authors' approach was informed by a thorough literature review and in-depth qualitative interviews with ten decision-makers at some of the foremost venture capital funds in Norway. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and coded using NVivo.

The authors' findings demonstrate that the Norwegian venture capital industry is influenced by homophily and role congruity. The authors highlight the challenges entrepreneurs face in gaining access to venture capital if they are not already members of the investors' network, a situation that results in a recycling effect that helps maintain the industry’s gender imbalance. Moreover, it appears that venture capitalists (VCs) favour masculine characteristics when assessing entrepreneurs, revealing a potential incongruence between female characteristics and perceived entrepreneurial attributes.

The authors' study contributes to and extends the extant literature on homophily and role congruity. Indeed, through investigating the gender-based perceptions of VCs, the authors shed new light on the mechanisms involved in their assessment of entrepreneurs, as well as on the drivers and barriers affecting female entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that may affect female Saudi students who are considered potential non‐professional investors.

A structured questionnaire was distributed to the participants; the obtained data were analyzed using the probit model and the Likert scale.

The results indicate that female students are more likely to own stocks if they have a high level of financial education. Variables such as age, income, grade point average (GPA), grade obtained in financial courses, and risk tolerance also affect stock ownership decision. The respondents also depend on 21 factors to analyze and evaluate stocks before making investment decisions.

Several studies have been conducted on investors' behavior; however, few of them have focused on non‐professional investors and none of these has focused on young, educated, female Saudi investors.

The financial market offers an intricate laboratory for the study of consumer behavior. One area that has received little attention in the finance literature and that could benefit from insights from consumer behavior research is the relationship between gender and consumer investment preferences and practices. The primary goal of the present study is to explore the influence of consumers' gender on their investment behavior. The study examines the investment strategies of male and female investors using psychometric measures and self‐reporting of investment behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether socio-economic factors influence portfolio composition of individual investors investing in stocks for the first time and how these factors relate to stock portfolio performance.

The study uses cross-sectional time-series analysis to examine a unique and detailed data set of Swedish stockholdings.

The results show that first-time investors do not hold diversified portfolios. They experience high market risk and, on average, underperform more experienced investors. Males have higher unsystematic risk in their portfolios than females and older investors have more diversified portfolios compared to younger investors.

The results show that individual investors should improve their insights by incorporating risk when investing in stocks.

Given the results of this paper, the movement from defined benefit to defined contribution pension schemes in many countries raises the issue of the need to better understand and monitor the risks in stock portfolios.

This study provides insights into whether socio-economic factors influence portfolio composition, the extent to which socio-economic factors and portfolio characteristics relate to portfolio returns, and whether portfolio performance between first-time and more experienced investors differs.

Given the size and growing importance of socially responsible (SR)‐related funds and investments, the purpose of this paper is to see if those who invest in socially responsible investments (SRIs) conform to a particular profile and if that profile is significantly different than that of a typical investor.

This study surveyed a large group of US‐based, well‐informed, individual investors, members of the American Association of Individual Investors. The survey respondents included both those who invest according to SRI principles, and those with no interest in SRI, to determine if demographic differences exist.

The paper finds that the typical SR investor is female and more likely to be single, younger, less wealthy, and better educated than their non‐SR counterparts.

Further research is needed to determine if the higher risk aversion of women and their greater concern for the environment found in previous studies is responsible for the results.

Given the statistically significant differences, additional efforts must be made to convince wealthier and male investors of the merits of socially responsible investing.

This is the first paper to use individuals who have committed resources to SR to compare their demographic characteristics to investors who have not invested in SRI products as distinct groups. Second, this is the first study to compare these groups using US investor data and to measure the statistical significance of the demographic factors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences in KiwiSaver portfolio composition between investors who receive financial advice and those who do not.

Using proprietary data which contain information of 405,107 individual KiwiSaver accounts, this paper examines who receives advice, compares the asset allocations of advised accounts with non-advised accounts, explores the relation of asset allocation with demographic characteristics and compares differences in returns between advised and non-advised investors.

Three key findings are presented in this paper. First, female investors, relatively older investors and investors with higher levels of funds under management (invested wealth) are more likely to receive financial advice. Second, advised investors hold more equity assets. Third, differences in performance between advised and non-advised accounts are marginal.

Panel data are not used, which prohibit investigating asset allocation choices overtime. The time series for returns is short, as KiwiSaver has only been operating since 2007. The total portfolio that people own is not known; thus, the values on investment fund information do not represent the total wealth of each person, as other accounts elsewhere may exist.

There are broad implications for the New Zealand capital market, retirement policy, financial advice industry and development of financial literacy programmes.

The paper examines individual investor behaviour on a nationwide sample and explores how receiving financial advice relates to asset allocation.

The purpose of this study is to review the literature at the intersection of crowdfunding and gender, while examining the extent to which crowdfunding has enhanced female financial inclusion and participation.

A systematic literature review was conducted across 47 studies from 2011 to April 2021.

Most studies suggest that the likelihood of success or failure of female-led campaigns depends on external factors associated with opportunities. The study points to a general trend where although female participation has not achieved its full potential, it is greater than in other channels, while enjoying higher chances of success for female fundraisers. The study highlights gaps in the literature and the associated opportunities for future research emerging from them.

This study is the first attempt to summarise and sensitise the literature on crowdfunding and gender. The study highlights the importance of analysing the impact of context on the conceptualisation of gender in alternative finance.