Religion And People's Choice Of Financial Assets

As an important part of culture, religion can influence people's attitude about worth and wealth, thus their economical behavior and financial decisions. There has been much more research about the relationship between people's religious beliefs and their financial assets choices, but less in China, so we try to discuss this topic among Chinese people.The theory shows that religiosity can influence people's level of sociability and trust,thus their financial decisions. According to the theory, we try to analyze the relationship between religiosity and people's choice of financial assets based on CGSS2010 data,finding that religious people are more likely to hold stocks, funds, bonds and some other risky assets. To find out the effective path, we put into the regression model sociality and trust respectively, the result shows that only trust can explain the phenomenon above reasonably, but not sociality. Furthermore, Chinese traditional religion, such as Buddhism and Taoism, is significantly positive related with people's hold of stocks and risky assets;Christianism is negative related with stock purchasing but not significant, and so does risky assets holding; Moslemism has a negative effect on stock purchasing and a positive effect on risky assets holding, but bother are not significant.Based on the conclusion, we suggest that the government, when it comes to the regulation of capital market, should focus on investors' cultural life and try to improve their level of sociability and trust.