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In a bid to broaden the understanding of the real estate investment decision-making framework, the purpose of this paper is to examine the real estate asset allocation decision-making practices of real estate funds in Nigeria, a developing economy. This is with a view to providing information toward enhancing real estate investment decisions.

A mixed-methods approach comprising a combination of literature review, expert interviews and semi-structured questionnaire survey is adopted for this study. Through literature review and expert interviews, the asset allocation decision-making process of institutional real estate funds was identified. Based on the literature review and expert discussions, a semi-structured questionnaire was developed and self-administered on fund/portfolio managers of 59 institutional real estate funds in Nigeria to investigate their asset allocation decision-making practice. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics for the closed-ended questions while the open-ended questions were content analyzed.

The findings revealed that the asset allocation decision-making process utilized by public and private real estate funds follows an opportunistic asset accumulation approach. The decision-making process also varies depending on the nature of the fund. Further findings showed that government policies, political uncertainties and regulatory mechanism motivate asset allocation decisions. Moreover, majority of the sampled real estate funds employed a combination of in-house personnel and external consultants (hybrid), while mean/standard deviation and cash flow analysis (DCF, NPV) were mostly utilized by the funds in making property investment decisions.

The findings implied that the real estate asset allocation decision-making process of institutional property investors in Nigeria deviates from the normative model of the asset allocation process prescribed in the literature and varies depending on the nature of the real estate funds. As such, familiarization of institutional investors with government policies, political climate and other regulatory mechanism (barriers to entry) guiding the ownership and operation of real estate assets in the country could improve their real estate investment decisions.

The study complements and extends existing literature on real estate asset allocation decision-making process of institutional investors from the viewpoint of the actors involved in a developing African economy.

The 21st century is a new century of environmental protection. Environmental protection is one of the most important subject matters yet to come. Moreover, as the public pays more attention to environmental problems, enterprises should increase their investment in environmental management. Therefore, determining the investment level for environmental management and allocating the investment to associated environmental management activities has become a major task. The principal and agent theory and sales response functions are used for analysis in this research. The allocation of capital investment in environmental management is found to have significant impact on the aggregate sales response, aggregate profit and investment level. Therefore, in preparing the budget for environmental management, enterprises should focus on investment allocation decisions, determine the investment level and allocation method using integrated means, and apply submarket data in the allocation decision‐making process. In other words, in setting the investment level, executive management should take managers’ willingness into consideration. In allocating capital investment, managers should identify the optimal allocation method based on submarket characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a controlled experiment to examine the effect of goal setting and affect framed feedback on repeated asset allocation investment decisions.

The design of the experiment is a 2×2 between subject design. Subjects allocated monies among four investments for 20 periods. One manipulation varied whether subjects received performance feedback in the form of a happy or sad face, while another manipulation varied whether subjects set a financial goal for themselves and received goal attainment performance feedback.

The main findings include: subjects initially allocate assets in a manner roughly consistent with their stated preference for risk; prior year asset performance leads subjects to make significant changes in portfolio asset allocation in a manner consistent with beliefs of positive autocorrelation in asset returns; and the addition of happy or sad faces to performance feedback information leads to even greater changes in asset allocation.

Using ideas from the theory on the self‐regulation of behavior and the role of affect in decision making, the authors develop an original framework to account for the results.

In addition to financial reporting, more and more companies report environmental, social and governance (ESG) information in emerging countries. This practice is intended to fulfill the information needs of all the company’s stakeholders, and more specifically the investors. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to analyze whether investors include ESG information into their investment allocation decisions in Tunisian capital market. Second, to identify the information dimension having the more effect on their investment allocation decisions.

A field experiment was conducted in an emerging country (Tunisia) among 245 novices and experienced financial stakeholders to analyze how ESG information is taken into account in their investment allocation decisions.

The results of the factorial mixed analysis of variance show that ESG information influenced the investment allocation decisions in Tunisia. In addition, the results of the post-hoc test indicate that governance and social information had more influence than environmental information.

This paper is limited to the analysis of the influence of ESG information only on the decisions of financial stakeholders in Tunisia. In future research works, it will be relevant to study the decisions of other stakeholders and to carry out comparative studies between several countries.

The results can only strengthen and motivate companies to pay more attention to their ESG information disclosure practices. They are also likely to attract the attention of the accounting standard setters on the need to standardize these practices.

The original contribution of this paper lies not only in the analysis of three dimensions of extra-financial information: E, S and G through an experiment carried out in an emerging country, but also especially in the comparison of the influence of each dimension on investment allocation decisions.

This study aims to identify the effect of the format of a presentation and the form of information on the decision-making process of non-professional investors in Indonesia. Investor behaviors, including acquisition, evaluation, weighting, judgment, and allocation decisions, are explained explicitly after taking a look at the form of the information and the way it is conveyed in various presentation formats.

This research used web-based experiments. It used a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. Eighty-nine selected students acted as surrogate investors. They were provided with company performance reports presented in different report formats (integrated versus non-integrated) and different forms of information (visual versus descriptive).

The results showed that information, when presented visually, is more influential on investment allocation decisions in Indonesia. In addition, the result of the post hoc test indicated that integrated reports are more influential than non-integrated reports.

The results of this study have significant implications for companies that publish financial and non-financial disclosures. The reports are required to be presented in an integrated and visual form in order to increase the investors' level of understanding so they can comprehend a company's performance holistically.

It is necessary for Indonesian policymakers to create regulations regarding the presentation of financial and non-financial information in an integrated and visual way.

This study fills a gap in the literature on integrated reports by showing that the visualization of information in such reports increases the level of understanding that underpins investment decision-making. Furthermore, this study contributes to cognitive load theory by providing evidence that the kind of presentation of information that facilitates people's cognitive ability is not only in the narrative form but visual presentation also works.

Drawing on broaden-and-build theory and promotion- and prevention-focus theory, the authors examined the role of positive and negative affectivity (PANA) on the riskiness of investment decisions. The authors also examined the mediating impact of financial knowledge network intensity (i.e. the level of communication with financially literate others in employees' social network) on the PANA—riskiness of investment decisions relationship.

Study 1 used a sample of undergraduate students and operationalized risk using a hypothetical investment scenario. Study 2 replicated and extended the Study 1 findings using employees and operationalized risk using their real-world investment allocations.

Both Studies 1 and 2 provided support for the negative direct relationship between NA and the riskiness of investment decisions. Study 2 found PA was marginally positively related to the riskiness of investment decisions. Financial knowledge network intensity mediated the relationship between NA and the riskiness of investment decisions in Study 2.

The findings suggest that employees who see the world in a generally negative light tended to have weaker financial knowledge networks, and this may be one mechanism that explains why they make low-risk investments.

Financial knowledge networks can provide access to critical information regarding investment opportunities. Socialization training or social mixers can be used to help employees build and improve their financial knowledge networks.

The authors integrate the research on PANA, social networks, and investment decisions to illuminate the social network processes that explain how affectivity impacts the riskiness of retirement investment decisions.

Corporate risk management is one of the critical concerns of managers when they make investment allocation decisions among multiple projects. The purpose of this paper is to address corporate investment issues illustrated by target‐beating in capital budgeting, and further discuss their applications in financial management, especially in venture capital finance.

Value‐at‐risk, a typical down‐side risk measure which is considered more appropriate for economic agents, is applied to the analysis. Probability theory and optimal control methodologies are used to derive analytical solutions.

By maximizing the probability of beating a pre‐determined target, an analytical optimal corporate investment allocation strategy is presented, and the corresponding probability and expected earliest time of success derived.

Various types of utility functions of economic agents and other dynamic downside risk measures can be considered in future research along this line.

This paper paves the road for applications of continuous‐time downside risk in making corporate investment decisions, especially in the field of new venture finance.

As one of the early studies investigating optimal investment decisions in continuous‐time downside risk‐based capital budgeting system, this project sheds light on corporate risk management, and provides risk‐averse decision makers with an effective tool.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the various segments of the managed funds market to establish if there is any significant difference in the way the assets are allocated into various asset categories and if investors base their investment decisions based on the past performance of the fund.

An average investor who does not possess superior investment knowledge may base their investment decision on the past performance of funds resulting in flow based on past performance. This study uses a panel regression model to test the relationship between net flows and past excess returns.

Significant differences are found in asset allocation between the retail and wholesale segments. Retail investors prefer less risky investments compared to wholesale investors and have lower preference for overseas investments. The results indicate that investors base their investment decisions on the past performance of funds, with the retail segment showing a higher level of influence of past performance, as compared to the wholesale segment. The results further show less evidence of a reaction to risk among the managed investment categories.

Fund managers use fund performance for marketing purposes and results of the study may be of importance to the managers and investors in understanding this objective. The findings are also of significance for policy makers in terms of understanding investor behaviour.

This is the first study of the Australian managed funds industry (including wholesale and retail funds) that tests the link between past performance and fund flows. The study includes data until June 2008, which includes a period when a number of policy changes occurred in Australian superannuation industry.

Integrated reporting (IR) aims to improve the quality of information available to capital providers. While IR is associated with decreases in investor uncertainty and increases in firm value, it is unclear how IR information directly influences investment decisions. This paper aims to investigate the investment considerations of Taiwanese investors and their initial impressions of the International Integrated Reporting Framework (IIRC Framework). In doing so, this study examines the relationships between investment considerations and the IIRC Framework’s concepts.

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 16 investors in Taiwan. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data collected.

In addition to economic and financial outlook, competitive advantages and ownership structure, Taiwanese investors emphasise management credibility as an important factor that influences investment decisions. Investors are reliant on private information sources and quantitative data. Sustainability disclosures and sustainability performance beyond legal requirements are often not considered. Taiwanese investors lack awareness of the IIRC Framework and are sceptical about the premise that integrated reports can provide information material to investment appraisal. The assertion that integrated reports reduce information asymmetry and influence investment decisions has to be treated with caution.

Self-selection bias and a potential lack of transferability in the findings are issues inherent in the research method and sample used.

IR information needs to be frequently updated rather than disclosed in a periodic report. Furthermore, integrated reports need to demonstrate a direct link between non-financial performance and financial value creation.

Mandating the supply of integrated reports is unlikely to influence investors’ capital allocation decisions unless investor demand is a driver of the regulation.

This study is one of the few to investigate IR from the investor’s perspective. Observations from this preliminary study warrant further investigations into the relevance of IR to investment communities globally.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate commitment escalation tendencies and magnitude in groups of entrepreneurship-minded decision makers.

The paper uses a software-based management simulation to expose 447 graduate business students in the USA and India to research stimuli under conditions that resemble important aspects of entrepreneurs’ business environment, such as a focus on overall firm performance. Unlike most previous escalation research that studied individuals, the primary unit of analysis is a three-person group.

The paper demonstrates a positive relationship between the groups’ entrepreneurial intentions and escalation magnitude. The paper also finds a direct relationship between sunk costs and subsequent investment amounts, suggesting an additional route through which sunk costs may impact escalation behavior – anchoring and insufficient adjustment.

The authors hope that the findings will stimulate further research on commitment escalation modalities and mechanisms among entrepreneurship-minded decision makers and provide impetus for efforts to develop effective debiasing strategies.

The study addresses a long-standing gap in entrepreneurship research, by demonstrating a significant positive relationship between entrepreneurial intentions and escalation behaviors. Also noteworthy, the results are generated using a different research method (simulation) than the experimental approach used in most extant escalation research. As such, the exploration provides important triangulating evidence that is currently lacking from the rich escalation literature.