| With the steady development of China’s economy,the wealth of residents has been rising and the demand for investment has been increasing.Creating wealth and managing wealth require different methods and professional skills.How to allocate wealth reasonably to obtain better investment returns is a challenge that many residents are facing or will face.At present,the financial literacy of Chinese residents is still generally low(Liao et al.,2021;Zheng and Xu,2021),and many individual investors have limited knowledge and skills to evaluate the appropriateness,cost and risk of products(Zhao,2011).The protection of the rights and interests of individual investors is the basis for improving the financial welfare of residents,relating to the reform,innovation,development and stability of the overall financial market,and is also a necessary condition for promoting highquality economic development.It has been generally believed that providing investors with knowledge about financial products and services is one of the most important measures to protect investors’ rights and interests(Liu et al.,2010).The overall investment income of individual investors in China is not good.According to the China Household Financial Survey(CHFS),more than half of the households participating in stock investment are in loss.In the asset management market,the phenomenon that the fund makes money but the fund investors do not is also obvious(Mo and Zhu,2013;Liu,etc.,2022).As for the choice of investment way,because of the investors’ own factors and the industry characteristics formed by the specific develop process of China’s asset management market,the use intensity of entrusted investment by individual investors is not high.But to most individual investor,it’s better to choose entrusted investment in the absence of information superiority.At the same time,most investors in China have insufficient portfolio diversity(Zeng et al.,2015;Wu et al.,2021).According to the 2019 China Household Financial Survey(CHFS)data,China’s households hold 4.4% and 1.3%of stocks and funds respectively,and 70.5% of households hold only one type of financial assets.Finding effective ways to optimize investment methods,improve the diversity of investment portfolio,and improve the overall investment income is the starting point of this paper,while the investor education in asset management industry is the important entry point to solve the problem.From the end of 2007 to the end of 2021,the scale of the asset management industry has increased from about 3 trillion yuan to more than 130 trillion yuan,with a compound annual growth rate of 31.16%,becoming the fastest growing sub-industry in China’s financial system.As a subsystem in the modern financial system,the asset management market has different mechanism from indirect finance and direct finance.In China,the asset management industry is the main channel for most individuals to know financial information and financial products,and to participate in financial investment and asset allocation.The investment education carried out by asset management institutions is not only a regulatory requirement,but also an important part of asset management services,which runs through the entire investment process.However,there are few literatures about investor education in asset management industry.Through combing the relevant literature of investor education,this paper finds that there are some research gaps in the existing literature.First of all,the existing research on investor education is mainly focused on the securities market.Whether in terms of the definition,content construction,or impact mechanism of investor education,there is a lack of attention to the asset management market.Secondly,the measurement of investor education in the existing literature is relatively simple,and can hardly reflect the differences in the content of investor education in different fields.Also,it is difficult to objectively measure the acceptance of investor education by different individuals at the present time when investor education is gradually popularized.Thirdly,the existing research on the role of investor education mainly analyzes the mechanism from financial knowledge,ignoring the behavioral guidance function of investor education beyond the popularization of basic financial knowledge.Finally,few literatures have paid attention to the impact of investor education on the choice of investment methods.Although some literatures have studied the impact of financial education on portfolio diversity and investment income respectively,they lack the overall analysis of investor education,entrusted investment ratio,portfolio diversity and investment income.Based on the above background,this paper uses interview and survey data to carry out four sub-studies in order:(1)the construction and quantification of investor education in asset management industry,(2)the impact of investor education in asset management industry on the proportion of entrusted investment,(3)the impact of investor education in asset management industry on portfolio diversity,and(4)the impact of investor education in asset management industry on investment income.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)This paper demonstrates theoretically that the asset management market has an operating mechanism different from indirect finance and direct finance,and then identifies and refines the dimensions of investor education content in the asset management industry through grounded theoretical research,and constructs a content system composed of seven sub-dimensions,They are "self-cognition","industry general knowledge","institutional perspective","product portrait","expected establishment","transaction execution" and "dynamic management".Following the development process of the scale,the investor education scale of asset management industry has been developed and tested,and then the investor education participation index of asset management industry has been constructed for each respondent through the questionnaire survey.(2)Investor education in the asset management industry can help improve investors’ use of entrusted investment methods.The analysis of the internal mechanism finds that investor education in the asset management industry helps to enhance investors’ trust in asset management institutions,enhance their perceived value of asset management services,and increase their perception of the convenience of financial services,thus increasing the proportion of investors’ entrusted investment.Heterogeneity analysis finds that industry general knowledge and institutional perspective have the greatest impact on the proportion of entrusted investment;The promotion effect of investor education in asset management industry on the proportion of entrusted investment is greater in the group of female investors and those who have not had independent investment experience before the entrusted investment.(3)Investor education in the asset management industry helps to improve the diversity level of investors’ portfolios.The analysis of the internal mechanism finds that investor education in the asset management industry helps to enhance investors’ trust in asset management institutions,increase their perception of the convenience of financial services,improve the level of investors’ risk taking,and thus improve the level of investors’ portfolio diversity.The heterogeneity analysis finds that industry general knowledge and product portraits have the greatest impact on portfolio diversity;The role of investor education in asset management industry in promoting the diversity of investors’ portfolios is more obvious among the groups in the region with low level of development of digital inclusive finance and those with low investment experience.(4)Investor education in the asset management industry helps to improve the overall investment income of investors and increase the finical welfare of the investors radically.The internal mechanism analysis finds that investor education in the asset management industry can improve the level of investment income by increasing the proportion of investors’ entrusted investment and the level of portfolio diversity.Heterogeneity analysis finds that self-perception and product portrait have the greatest impact on investment returns;The promotion effect of investor education in asset management industry on investment income is more obvious among married investors.Based on the comparison with the existing literature,this paper has some innovations in the research object,research content and research methods.In terms of research objects,many literatures have discussed the impact of general financial education on individual financial behavior and financial welfare,but have not reached a consistent conclusion.The reason may be that there are differences in the definition and measurement of financial education.The existing research on investor education mainly focuses on investors in the securities market,ignoring the investor education in the asset management industry with a larger investor scale.This paper takes the investor education in asset management industry as the research object,explores its impact on investor behavior and results,and selects three variables as the key explanatory variables: the proportion of entrusted investment,portfolio diversity and investment income.This not only enriches the research literature in the field of financial education,but also is a useful supplement to the research literature on investor behavior.The innovations of research contents and methods are embodied in the four sub-studies of this paper.(1)The construction and quantification of investor education in asset management industry.There are relatively few studies on the content of investor education,only some scholars have put forward principled guidance,and few studies have focused on the content construction of investor education in asset management industry.In the measurement of investor education,the existing research mainly constructs a binary variable through "whether to participate in investor education" to quantify.There is no more detailed description of the content and degree of participation in investor education,and it is difficult to objectively measure the individual’s acceptance of investor education.This paper uses the comparative research method to make a multi-dimensional comparison between the asset management market and other financial markets,uses the research paradigm of classical grounded theory to construct the content system of investor education in the asset management industry,and follows the development process of the scale to develop the investor education scale in asset management industry,which provides a quantitative basis for empirical research.(2)The impact of investor education in asset management industry on the proportion of entrusted investment.The existing research on the effect mechanism of investor education or financial education is mainly carried out from the perspective of improving financial knowledge,which affects investment confidence,investment behavior and other financial behaviors through the improvement of knowledge level.Less of them focuses on other function ways except the finicial cognition.and there is no literature on the impact of investor education on the use of entrusted investment methods.Through market survey data,this paper verifies the positive impact of investor education in asset management industry on the proportion of entrusted investment,providing new ideas to promote the institutionalization process of investors in China.At the same time,this paper makes a multi-dimensional analysis of the mechanism,clarifies the way that investor education in the asset management industry affects the proportion of entrusted investment,makes up for the deficiencies of existing research in this regard,and helps to put forward targeted recommendations.(3)The impact of investor education in asset management industry on portfolio diversity.It has been found that financial knowledge and financial education can help improve portfolio diversity(Zeng et al.,2015;Peng et al.,2019),but there is no in-depth discussion on the effect mechanism,and there is little literature on the impact of investor education in specific fields on portfolio.Using market survey data,this paper not only verifies the positive impact of investor education in asset management industry on portfolio diversity,but also conducts mechanism analysis from three aspects of trust,perceived convenience and risk bearing level,which fills the gap of existing literature and provides new methods and new paths for improving portfolio diversity.(4)The impact of investor education in asset management industry on investment income.Some studies have found that financial knowledge and financial education have a significant positive impact on investors’ returns(Jiang et al.,2019;Zhang,2021),and some studies have shown that entrusted investment performs better than individual independent investment(Shapira and Venezia,2001;Mottola et al.,2008),and the diversity of investment portfolio helps to improve investment returns(Brinson et al.,1991;Goetzmann and Kumar,2008).This paper creatively incorporates investor education in asset management industry,entrusted investment ratio,portfolio diversity and investment income into the overall analysis framework,and finds that investor education in asset management industry can have a positive impact on the overall investment income by promoting entrusted investment proportion and portfolio diversity,It provides a more dimensional perspective for understanding the behavioral characteristics and income influencing factors of investors in China’s asset management industry. |
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