Financial Advice Taking in Online Environments
People now routinely make financial decisions through online portals and environments that incorporate a wide variety of information about investments, financial advisors, and other investors’ decisions. However, we do not understand how to design these environments to support good financial decision-‐making. In preliminary work we have found that irrelevant information about a financial advisors online activities can enhance their credibility and lead to poor investment choices. In this project we will investigate how activity traces and social information in online environments can influencefinancial decision-‐making.We willfirstconduct a set of exploratory interviews tounderstandhow people use social networks for trading and what information they attend to when making investment decisions online.We will then conduct a series of experiments where participants are asked to make investment decisions in online environments. We will vary the amount and type of information they get about financial advisors and other investors. We will look at how these variations influence investment decisions, perceptions of advisor credibility, and satisfaction with the online portal. Our results will inform the design of online investment platforms and portals.
