Gender differences in preferences for firm characteristics across different groups of investors

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to study gender differences in preferences for firm characteristics across various groups of investors in Malaysia.

Design/methodology/approach

Self-declared preferences are elicited through a survey of 520 investors comprising retail, financial professionals and institutional investors in the Malaysian stock market. Non-parametric (Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis) tests are computed to achieve the stated objective.

Findings

Results reveal that female investors display higher preferences for the liquidity of a firm, dividend payments, trading volume of a firm, stock price and firm’s age than male investors across investor’s groups.

Research limitations/implications

Findings imply that the gender gap in investing behaviour can be partly attributed to gender differences in preferences for firm characteristics.

Practical/implications

The findings suggest that the gender gap can be mitigated by giving more priority to the choices of female investors with respect to firm characteristics. In turn, this may reduce a part of the gender gap in investing. Moreover, the findings would assist companies to understand and know how their shareholder’s preferences vary with respect to gender and investor’s groups.

Originality/value

This paper provides evidence concerning the gender gap in investor’s self-declared preferences for firm characteristics across retail, financial professionals and institutional investors in Malaysia, which complements previous studies that used equity holdings data and only two groups of investors.

Citation

Khan, M.T.I., Tan, S.-H. and Chong, L.-L. (2016), "Gender differences in preferences for firm characteristics across different groups of investors", Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 2-15. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRFM-08-2014-0025