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This paper aims to show how overconfidence influences the decisions and performance of individual investors trading on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), with the mediating role of risk perception and moderating role of financial literacy.

The deductive approach was used, as the research is based on the theoretical framework of behavioural finance. A questionnaire and cross-sectional design were employed for data collection from the sample of 183 individual investors trading on the PSX. Hypotheses were tested through correlation and regression analysis. The Baron and Kenny method was used to test the mediation effect of risk perception and the moderation effect of financial literacy. The results of mediation and moderation were also authenticated through the PROCESS and structural equation modelling (SEM) technique.

The results suggest that risk perception fully mediates the relationships between the overconfidence heuristic on the one hand, and investment decisions and performance on the other. At the same time, financial literacy appears to moderate these relationships. The results suggest that overconfidence can impair the quality of investment decisions and performance, while financial literacy and risk perception can improve their quality.

The paper encourages investors to base decisions on their financial capability and experience levels and to avoid relying on heuristics or their sentiments when making investments. It provides awareness and understanding of heuristic biases in investment management, which could be very useful for decision makers and professionals in financial institutions, such as portfolio managers and traders in commercial banks, investment banks and mutual funds. This paper helps investors to select better investment tools and avoid repeating the expensive errors that occur due to heuristic biases. They can improve their performance by recognizing their biases and errors of judgment, to which we are all prone, resulting in better investment decisions and a more efficient market. The paper also highlights the importance on relying on professional knowledge, giving it greater weight than feelings and biases.

The current study is the first to focus on links between overconfidence, financial literacy, risk perception and individual investors' decisions and performance. This article enhanced the understanding of the role that heuristic-driven bias plays in the investment management, and more importantly, it went some way towards enhancing understanding of behavioural aspects and their influence on the investment decision-making and performance in an emerging market. It also adds to the literature in the area of behavioural finance specifically the role of heuristics in investment strategies; this field is in its initial stage, even in developed countries, while, in developing countries, little work has been done.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of heuristic biases, namely, availability bias and representativeness bias on investors’ investment decisions in the Pakistan stock exchange, as well as the moderating role of long-term orientation.

Using a structured questionnaire, a total of 374 responses have been collected from individual investors trading in PSX. The relationship was tested by applying the partial least square structural equation model using SmartPLS 3.2.2. Further, Henseler and Chin’s (2010) product indicator approach for moderation analysis was applied to the data set.

The results revealed that availability bias and representativeness bias have a significant and positive influence on the investment decisions of investors. Furthermore, a significant moderating effect of long term orientation on the effect of representativeness bias on investment decision is observed. This suggests that investors’ long term orientation weaken the effect of representativeness bias on investment decision. However, no significant moderating effect was observed for availability bias.

The paper provides novel insights on the role of heuristic-driven biases on the investment decisions of individual investors in the stock market. Particularly, it enhanced the understanding of behavioral aspects of investment decision-making in an emerging market.

The overall purpose of the study is to identify the impact of heuristics, prospect theory biases and personality traits on property investment decision-making of rank and file individuals in Kosovo, with a concentration in Prishtina, which is the city with the largest number of investors and property transactions in Kosovo.

The present study used quantitative research with the questionnaire used as a research instrument. The questionnaire survey was conducted with 1,209 rank and file property investors in Prishtina, Kosovo. The sampling method used in this research was stratified random sampling.

The study finds that heuristics, prospect theory biases and personality traits as a whole model affect investment decision-making in Prishtina, Kosovo. Nevertheless, the study finds that not all dimensions of the constructed research model (heuristics, the prospect theory and personality) affect the property investment decision-making in Prishtina at the same level. Whereas prospect theory biases (regret aversion, framing and self-control) seem to very strongly influence property investment decision-making of rank and file investors in Prishtina, personality traits (conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to new experiences) seem not to affect the real estate investment decision-making. Finally, heuristics biases also strongly influence the real estate investment decision-making with a strong statistically significant explanatory power but not to the same degree as prospect theory biases.

The present study contributes toward the understanding of the role that is played by heuristics, prospect theory biases and personality traits in Kosovo's property investment industry. More importantly, the implication of the results of the present study is that it goes some way toward enhancing understanding of heuristic and prospect theory-driven biases and their influence on property investment decision-making in a developing economy. The present study paves the way to further analyze why personality traits do not influence property investment decision-making in Kosovo.

The present study is the first quantification of the impact of heuristics, prospect theory biases and personality traits on the investment decision-making of rank and file individuals in Prishtina, Kosovo.

The study assesses impact of individual cultural values on investment choices (aggressive or conservative), of 450 investors with behavioural biases and risk propensity in serial as mediators in the relationship.

The study used serial mediation analysis using Hayes model 6 for creating six models.

Findings of the study indicated that individualism traits are inclined to aggressive investment choices due to presence of overconfidence biases. Uncertainty avoidance and longtermism traits of investors resulted in aggressive investment choices due to presence of herd mentality bias. The moderating impact of past investing experiences was found significant.

The study indicates the importance of cultural values and past investing experiences of investors that may develop biases to assess investment choices and decisions of investors.

The global rise in obesity can be closely linked to excessive calorie consumption and misperceptions regarding food intake. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature to have a better understanding how heuristic cues – mental shortcuts used for decision-making – impact calorie underestimation and consequently lead to unhealthy eating habits.

A search was conducted across multiple databases with priority given to studies in developed countries that provided insights into the cognitive processes behind food choices, the application of specific heuristics, and the association with eating behaviours. Articles were also selected based on their methodological quality.

The main findings are that the dichotomous categorization of foods as healthy or unhealthy can result in underestimating the calorie content in those foods perceived as healthy. Although nutrition claims, health claims and campaigns help in the fight against obesity, there is also the risk that consumers’ reliance on heuristic-based decision-making could aggravate the problem because a misinterpretation or misrepresentation could lead to calorie underestimation and overeating.

To establish effective behavioural interventions for obesity prevalence -, it is critical for interventions and policies to understand how consumers perceive calorie content and how they interpret claims on food marketing or packaging. Recognizing and addressing these heuristic-driven biases and understanding the factors influencing food choices are crucial for encouraging healthier eating habits.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the only review to date that consolidates research on the topic, drawing from multiple disciplines.

Through a portfolio choice model, the study empirically examines the influence of the heuristic simplification through peak-end rule (PER) and the associated neglect of the duration of the experience. The portfolio strategy adopted involves optimizing portfolios to capture the impact of heuristic-driven investors' experience of good and bad states. The study attempts to validate PER in an empirical context and is expected to generate trading rules, which would exploit pricing errors emerging out of the use of heuristics by investors.

The empirical approach adopted in the study primarily examines returns to portfolios sorted according to various hedonic evaluation rules. Behavioral portfolios are constructed using hedonic experiences as conditioning variables.

The results imply that there is continued investor demand for such assets in the short run. An equal weight portfolio based on a three-month hedonic evaluation earns an average monthly return of 2.77% over the next 12 months.

The authors’ study may perhaps be the first attempt to use the peak-end heuristic in portfolio construction.

The purpose of this research is to analyze the influence of heuristics on Brazilian investors' behavior in the decision-making process.

The authors apply the partial least squares structural equation modeling methodology. This sample is composed of 220 investors.

The heuristics of overconfidence and anchoring positively influence investors' decision-making, while loss aversion negatively influences it. The herd effect exhibits no influence. The results also support the idea that decision-making positively influences investors' performance. Investors feel secure in their attitudes regarding financial decision-making, even if their decisions are not always rational as they are affected by biases.

This article explains the influence of heuristics on investors' decision-making and performance in the Brazilian context during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The aim of this special issue is to better understand the strategy and change interface, in particular, the (sub)processes and cognitions that enable strategies to be successfully implemented and organizations effectively changed. The ten papers selected for this special issue reflect a range of scholarly traditions and, thus, as our review and integration of the relevant literatures, and our introductions to the ten papers demonstrate, they shed light on the strategy and change interface in starkly different ways. Collectively, the papers give us more insight into the recursive activities, and structural, organizational learning and cognitive mechanisms that are encouraged or deliberately established at organizations to allow their people to successfully implement a strategy and effect change, including achieve greater levels of horizontal alignment. Moreover, they demonstrate the benefits associated with establishing platforms and/or routines designed to overcome decision-makers’ cognitive shortcomings while implementing a strategy or making timely adjustments to it. We conclude our editorial by identifying some yet unanswered questions.

Despite its devastating nature, the COVID-19 pandemic has also catalyzed a substantial surge in the adoption and integration of technological tools within economies, exerting a profound influence on the dissemination of information among participants in stock markets. Consequently, this present study delves into the ramifications of post-pandemic dynamics on stock market behavior. It also examines the relationship between investors' sentiments, underlying behavioral drivers and their collective impact on global stock markets.

Drawing upon data spanning from 2012 to 2023 and encompassing major world indices classified by Morgan Stanley Capital International’s (MSCI) market and regional taxonomy, this study employs a threshold regression model. This model effectively distinguishes the thresholds within these influential factors. To evaluate the statistical significance of variances across these thresholds, a Wald coefficient analysis was applied.

The empirical results highlighted the substantive role that investors' sentiments and behavioral determinants play in shaping the predictability of returns on a global scale. However, their influence on developed economies and the continents of America appears comparatively lower compared with the Asia–Pacific markets. Similarly, the regions characterized by a more pronounced influence of behavioral factors seem to reduce their reliance on these factors in the post-pandemic landscape and vice versa. Interestingly, the post COVID-19 technological advancements also appear to exert a lesser impact on developed nations.

This study pioneers the investigation of these contextual dissimilarities, thereby charting new avenues for subsequent research studies. These insights shed valuable light on the contextualized nexus between technology, societal dynamics, behavioral biases and their collective impact on stock markets. Furthermore, the study's revelations offer a unique vantage point for addressing market inefficiencies by pinpointing the pivotal factors driving such behavioral patterns.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast two lay theories of how consumers draw affective inferences about their online bidding experiences. The active-bidder theory (smart-bidder theory) predicts that after winning a bid, highly (minimally) participative bidders would be more satisfied than minimally (highly) participative bidders.

Four experiments test two competing hypotheses, the active-bidder hypothesis and the smart-bidder hypothesis (Study 1), identify a condition that mitigates the observed effects (Study 2), identify when the mitigation is effective or ineffective (Study 3) and replicate the findings in a scenario-based study where participants are allowed to make actual bidding decisions (Studies 4A and 4B).

The findings support the smart-bidder hypothesis across three different product categories; however, this heuristic-driven effect is absent when bidders have concrete shopping goals. The effect was sufficiently robust to be observed even when the bids are made at will.

The present research does not incorporate the widely adopted procedure of second-price auction (also known as proxy bidding in the eBay setting), a system that allows the highest bidder to win the auction but pay the amount of the second-highest bid.

Online consumers should be mindful that entering the minimum number of bids not only helps consumers avoid overbidding but also elevates their joy in winning after the auction ends.

Prior research on bidding behavior on online auction sites has yet to examine how different bidding dynamics affect consumers’ post-auction satisfaction. This research sheds light on the psychological process underlying the robust phenomenon: online auction consumers rely heavily on proxy signals. Bidders appear to use the efficiency heuristic in constructing their affective judgments of their buying experiences.