• The Impacts of e-Stock-Investors’ Involvement in Virtual Community on Their Investment Behaviors

Abstract

This study explores the impacts of e-stock-investors’ involvement in virtual community on their investment behaviors. It is the first paper, as far as we know, discussing this issue systematically by a large-scale survey. The empirical results show that individual e-investors’ involvement in virtual communities significantly affects their portfolio diversification and trading turnover. Specifically, when a Taiwanese e-investor spends more time in virtual community, he/she holds a more diversified portfolio and trades more frequently. In addition, when he/she attends more social websites, he/she is more inclined to do the loss-stops. It implies that the virtual community is not “virtual” and brings about significant influences on investment behaviors. The findings of this paper are insightful for the re- searches on the social networks analysis in Sociology, the interpersonal relationships in Social Psychology, as well as the investment behaviors in Finance

Keywords: virtual community, portfolio diversification, trading turnover, stop-loss