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

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.