Project description

There has been an increase in investments in technology-based financial products (e.g., cryptocurrencies). Professional and private investors now have easy access to these decentralized financial technologies via their smartphones. This project explores how social media information affects the investment behavior of non-professional investors driven by the so-called Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). Additionally, this project examines how to protect investors from substantial financial risks.

FOMO is defined as the anxiety of potentially missing rewarding opportunities and experiences resulting from social information concerning risky decisions under uncertainty. So far, research has investigated FOMO in experiential activities with peers. Because of increasing amounts of information and easier access to risky financial products, such as cryptocurrencies and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), the FOMO phenomenon has become more and more prevalent in other contexts. For example, as a potential driver of investment decisions of non-professional investors. These investors gain easy access to volatile and high-risk asset classes of the capital markets because of current developments in digitalization.

Based on sociolinguistic longitudinal data, this project explores how digital and social media patterns may indicate potential triggers of FOMO in cryptocurrency and NFT trading. Further, this project investigates the relationships between these FOMO triggers, digital discourse, information dissemination, and the capital markets. Last, effective coping strategies to protect non-professional investors will be examined.

Cooperations

• Dr. Baris Pascal Güntürkün, Department of Marketing, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria

• Dr. Douglas A. Parry, Department of Information Science, Stellenbosch University, South Africa