How Investors’ Financial Well-being Influences Enterprises and Individual’s Psychological Fitness? Moderating Role of Experience under Uncertainty

The study aims to investigate the role of financial well-being of the investor on psychological fitness of clients and organizations in the emerging financial markets of India. A survey was conducted during the pandemic in Indian financial markets wherein most of people’s financial situation was extremely poor and uncertain. During the COVID-19 pandemic, retail investors who availed themselves of financial products and services from leading brokerage houses of India were investigated. The study was conducted on 290 retail investors of Delhi, National Capital Region (NCR) and the financial hub of Mumbai. The participants were approached using the purposive sampling method. The study further examined moderating effects of pleasant and unpleasant experience of investors during difficult times. The study applied partial least square multi-group analysis (PLS–MGA) for measuring invariance for pleasant and unpleasant scenarios of investors in the Indian context. The findings suggested that consumers’ well-being enhances individual satisfaction at higher enterprise levels, it also motivates individuals to manage their finances to deal with uncertain times. Additionally, the control variables of age and gender were used to measure pleasant and unpleasant experiences of investors from the base of their satisfaction level. The results suggest that during difficult times in financial markets, females exhibited higher unpleasant experiences than male investors. Further, consumers’ well-being was primarily driven by older investors with pleasant experiences during the pandemic. The present study offers an interdisciplinary approach towards measuring consumers’ psychology in the domain of behavioral finance.