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This article aims to systematically review the literature published in recognized journals focused on cognitive heuristic-driven biases and their effect on investment management activities and market efficiency. It also includes some of the research work on the origins and foundations of behavioral finance, and how this has grown substantially to become an established and particular subject of study in its own right. The study also aims to provide future direction to the researchers working in this field.

For doing research synthesis, a systematic literature review (SLR) approach was applied considering research studies published within the time period, i.e. 1970–2021. This study attempted to accomplish a critical review of 176 studies out of 256 studies identified, which were published in reputable journals to synthesize the existing literature in the behavioral finance domain-related explicitly to cognitive heuristic-driven biases and their effect on investment management activities and market efficiency as well as on the origins and foundations of behavioral finance.

This review reveals that investors often use cognitive heuristics to reduce the risk of losses in uncertain situations, but that leads to errors in judgment; as a result, investors make irrational decisions, which may cause the market to overreact or underreact – in both situations, the market becomes inefficient. Overall, the literature demonstrates that there is currently no consensus on the usefulness of cognitive heuristics in the context of investment management activities and market efficiency. Therefore, a lack of consensus about this topic suggests that further studies may bring relevant contributions to the literature. Based on the gaps analysis, three major categories of gaps, namely theoretical and methodological gaps, and contextual gaps, are found, where research is needed.

The skillful understanding and knowledge of the cognitive heuristic-driven biases will help the investors, financial institutions and policymakers to overcome the adverse effect of these behavioral biases in the stock market. This article provides a detailed explanation of cognitive heuristic-driven biases and their influence on investment management activities and market efficiency, which could be very useful for finance practitioners, such as an investor who plays at the stock exchange, a portfolio manager, a financial strategist/advisor in an investment firm, a financial planner, an investment banker, a trader/broker at the stock exchange or a financial analyst. But most importantly, the term also includes all those persons who manage corporate entities and are responsible for making their financial management strategies.

Currently, no recent study exists, which reviews and evaluates the empirical research on cognitive heuristic-driven biases displayed by investors. The current study is original in discussing the role of cognitive heuristic-driven biases in investment management activities and market efficiency as well as the history and foundations of behavioral finance by means of research synthesis. This paper is useful to researchers, academicians, policymakers and those working in the area of behavioral finance in understanding the role that cognitive heuristic plays in investment management activities and market efficiency.

The field of behavioural finance analyses the effects of mental factors on financial decisions including risk. If you want to know how people think about money and investments, you need to study behavioural finance. People’s attitudes about investing were uncovered through this study. Hence, their views on financial investing. Overconfidence, perception, representative, anchoring cognitive dissonance, regret aversion, limited framing, and mental accounting are only few of the behavioural finance concepts that are discussed in this article, along with their effects on stock market investor decision making. In order to poll 181 Bangalore investors, we employed a conventional questionnaire. The primary focus was on learning how behavioural financing influences investors and their investment choices. Our secondary objective was to study behavioural finance and investor psychology.

This paper describes how financial professionals' behavioral biases influence their financial forecast and decision-making process. Most of the earlier studies are focused on well-developed financial markets, and little is researched about financial professionals, such as institutional investors, portfolio managers, investment advisors, financial analysts, etc., in emerging markets.

An expert-validated questionnaire measure four prominent behavioral biases and Indian financial professionals' rational decision-making process. The final sample consists of 274 valid responses using the purposive sampling technique. IBM SPSS and AMOS structural equation modeling (SEM) software are used to build measurement and structural models, multivariate analysis including regression, factor analysis, etc.

The results provide empirical insights into the relationship between behavioral biases and the decision-making process. The results suggest that the structural path model closely fits the sample data. The presence of behavioral biases indicates that financial professionals' forecasting and decision-making is not always rational but bounded rational or irrational due to these factors. Furthermore, these biases (except overconfidence bias) have a markedly significant and positive relationship with irrational decision-making.

It is critical to eradicate these psychological errors, but awareness and attentiveness toward behavioral biases may help financial professionals to make informed decisions. Investors can improve their portfolio decisions and investments by recognizing their judgment errors and focusing on specific investment strategies to mitigate the impact of these biases. It is necessary to incorporate behavioral insights while developing training techniques for financial professionals. Rules of thumb, visual tools, financial coaching and implementing social-cultural elements in training programs enable financial professionals to develop simple, engaging, appealing and customized approaches for their clients.

This novel study is the first of this kind of research that examines the relationship between financial professionals' behavioral biases and rational decision-making process. This study significantly and remarkably provides insights into irrationality in financial professionals' decision-making.

This study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis to provide a comprehensive picture and identify future research directions to enrich the existing literature on behavioral biases.

The data set comprises 518 articles from the Web of Science database. Performance analysis is used to highlight the significant contributors (authors, institutions, countries and journals) and contributions (highly influential articles) in the field of behavioral biases. In addition, network analysis is used to delve into the conceptual and social structure of the research domain.

The current review has identified four major themes: “Influence of behavioral biases on investment decisions,” “Determinants of home bias,” “Impact of biases on stock market variables” and “Investors’ decision-making under uncertainty.” These themes reveal that a majority of studies have focused on equity markets, and research on other asset classes remains underexplored.

This study extracted data from a single database (Web of Science) to ensure standardization of results. Consequently, future research could broaden the scope of the bibliometric review by incorporating multiple databases.

The novelty of this research is to provide valuable guidance by evaluating the existing literature and advancing the knowledge base on the conceptual and social structure of behavioral biases.

This study aims to systematically review various behavioral biases that impact an investor’s decision-making process. The prime objective of this paper is to thematically explore the behavioral bias literature and propose a comprehensive framework that can elucidate a more reasonable explanation of changes in financial markets and investors’ behavior.

Systematic literature review (SLR) methodology is applied to a portfolio of 71 peer-reviewed articles collected from different electronic databases between 2007 and 2021. Content analysis of the extant literature is performed to identify the research themes and existing gaps in the literature.

This research identifies publication trends of the behavioral biases literature and uncovers 24 different biases that impact individual investors’ decision-making. Through thematic analysis, an attribute–consequence–impact framework is proposed that explains different biases leading to individual investors’ irrationality. The study further proposes directions for future research by applying the theory–characteristics–context–methodology framework.

The results of this research will help scholars and practitioners in understanding the existence of various behavioral biases and assist them in identifying potential strategies which can evade the negative effects of these biases. The findings will further help the financial service providers to understand these biases and improve the landscape of financial services.

The essence of the current paper is the application of the SLR method on 24 biases in the area of behavioral finance. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt of its kind which provides a methodical and comprehensive compilation of both cognitive and emotional behavioral biases that affect the individual investor’s decision-making.

This paper aims to review, systematize and integrate existing research on disposition effect and investments. This study conducts bibliometric analysis, including performance analysis and science mapping and thematic analysis of studies on disposition effect.

This study adopted a thematic and bibliometric analysis of the papers related to the disposition effect. A total of 231 papers published from 1971 to 2021 were retrieved from the Scopus database for the study, and bibliometric analysis and thematic analysis were performed.

This study’s findings demonstrate that research on the disposition effect is interdisciplinary and influences the research in the domain of both corporate and behavioral finance. This review indicates limited research on cross-country data. This study indicates a strong presence of work on investor psychology and behavioral finance when it comes to the disposition effect. The findings of thematic analysis further highlight that most of the research has focused on prospect theory, trading strategies and a few cognitive and emotional biases.

The findings of this study can be used by investors to minimize their biases and losses. The study also highlights new techniques in machine learning and neurosciences, which can help investment firms better understand their clients’ behavior. Policymakers can use the study’s findings to nudge investors’ behavior, focusing on minimizing the effects of the disposition effect.

This study has performed the quantitative bibliometric and thematic analysis of existing studies on the disposition effect and identified areas of future research on the phenomenon of disposition effect in investments.

This study aims to use a qualitative approach to explore and clarify the mechanism by which heuristic-driven biases influence the decisions and performance of individual investors actively trading on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX). It also aims to identify how to overcome the negative effect of heuristic-driven biases, so that finance practitioners can avoid the expensive errors which they cause.

This study adopts an interpretative approach. Qualitative data was collected in semistructured interviews, in which the target population was asked open-ended questions. The sample consists of five brokers and/or investment strategists/advisors who maintain investors’ accounts or provide investment advice to investors on the PSX, who were selected on a convenient basis. The researchers analyzed the interview data thematically.

The results confirm that investors often use heuristics, causing several heuristic-driven biases when trading on the stock market, specifically, reliance on recognition-based heuristics, namely, alphabetical ordering of firm names, name memorability and name fluency, as well as cognitive heuristics, such as herding behavior, disposition effect, anchoring and adjustment, repetitiveness, overconfidence and availability biases. These lead investors to make suboptimal decisions relating to their investment management activities. Due to these heuristic-driven biases, investors trade excessively in the stock market, and their investment performance is adversely affected.

This study provides a practical framework to explore and clarify the mechanism by which heuristic-driven biases influence investment management activities. To the best of authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first to focus on links between heuristic-driven biases, investment decisions and performance using a qualitative approach. Furthermore, with the help of a qualitative approach, the investigators also highlight some factors causing an increased use of heuristic variables by investors and discuss practical approaches to overcoming the negative effects of heuristics factors, so that finance practitioners can avoid repeating the expensive errors which they cause, which also differentiates this study from others.

A separate study of the different behavioral biases does not allow for a full understanding of the complexity and stability of the heterogeneity of beliefs. Therefore, through a more global view of these anomalies, the authors wish to show that they can converge on a single concept, which is the heterogeneity of beliefs.

It is therefore essential to stress that the importance of this study is mainly reflected in the methodological approach used in the construction and analysis of the map and not only in the results achieved. This contribution states that structural analysis, as a means of building the cognitive map, can facilitate the task of investors and other decision-makers, in the identification and analysis of the heterogeneity of beliefs that can therefore guide investors' strategy in decision-making.

The authors have studied the behavior of the investor and its way of interpreting the information and the authors have emphasized the value of studying the concept of heterogeneity of beliefs in its complexity. So that part of the work seems to be relevant and crucial to filling, if you will, that void. In this sense, the authors have shown that behavioral abnormalities are multidimensional concepts: “self-deception”, “cognitive bias”, “emotional bias” and “social bias”.

In particular, this article will aim to achieve the objective of proposing a model for measuring the heterogeneity of beliefs. Thus, the authors want to show that the heterogeneity of beliefs can be measured directly through the different behavioral anomalies.

This study examines the effects of financial literacy and financial risk tolerance on investor behavior by introducing social stigma as a mediator and emotional intelligence as a moderating factor.

Data is collected from 761 financially independent individual investors, with a minimum age of 25 years, a minimum of five years of stock market experience and residing in five selected major Indian cities. The collected data is subsequently analyzed using SmartPLS. Homogeneous purposive sampling followed by snowball sampling was employed.

The findings of the study demonstrate a strong and noteworthy impact of financial literacy on investor behavior. The research reveals that social stigma acts as a partial mediator and emotional intelligence plays a significant moderator with direct effects and indirect effects between financial literacy, financial risk tolerance, social stigma and investor behavior.

Exploring emotional intelligence in financial decisions enriches academic programs by integrating it into financial education. Collaboration between academia and financial institutions yields practical tools, infusing emotional intelligence into services. This prompts systemic shifts, reshaping education and societal discourse, fostering inclusive, emotionally intelligent financial landscapes, aiming to redefine both academic teachings and real-world financial practices.

Integrating emotional intelligence into government-led financial literacy programs can transform societal perspectives on financial decision-making. Customized services, destigmatizing workshops and collaborative efforts with academia foster an emotionally intelligent financial landscape, reshaping traditional paradigms.

Promoting open societal discussions about finances combats stigma, fostering a supportive space for risk-taking. Emphasizing emotional intelligence in awareness campaigns cultivates inclusivity and confidence. Normalizing financial talks empowers individuals, enhancing their well-being. Elevating both financial literacy and emotional intelligence enhances overall financial health, nurturing a community adept at navigating financial journeys.

This study marks a notable contribution to behavioral finance and social stigma theory by examining their intersection with emotional intelligence. It uniquely introduces social stigma as a mediator and emotional intelligence as a moderator, unexplored in this context. This novelty underscores the research’s significance, offering practical insights into financial well-being.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-08-2023-0626

The disposition effect remains one of the most significant investor behavior puzzles. This study aims to consolidate the knowledge, explore current dynamics, elicit trends and offer future research directions to demystify the disposition effect.

This study applies the hybrid review method. It first used bibliometric analysis (212 documents), followed by content analysis (54 articles) to analyze the breadth and depth of literature on the disposition effect.

This study presents performance analysis and science mapping. It identifies five main research streams: evidence, implications and mitigation techniques; theoretical explanations; investor biases and hedonic framing; attributes, beliefs and preferences; and implications for asset pricing and market efficiency. This study further offers future research directions for disposition effect research.

This study deploys sequential bibliometric and content analysis. A meta-analysis of quantitative articles could provide specific insights regarding the disposition effect. Besides, this study is based on Scopus-indexed journals only.

This study benefits investors and portfolio managers as they learn effective ways to guard against the disposition effect. Policymakers may tweak tax laws to incentivize long-term holding, and regulators can run investor education campaigns to minimize the disposition effect’s consequences effectively.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is probably the first hybrid review of high-quality, contemporary articles on the disposition effect that offers science mapping, research streams, future research directions and a succinct summary of theories, contexts, characteristics and methods deployed in the field of research.