Social Media and Mutual Fund Investment Decision-Making among Retail Investors: Evidence from Mumbai and Thane

The growing use of social media for financial information has changed the way retail investors encounter investment-related opinions, market information and product-related content. This study examines whether age, educational qualification and the frequency of consuming financial or investment content through social media are associated with mutual fund investment decision scores among retail investors represented in the Mumbai and Thane region. Primary data was collected from 67 retail investors through a structured questionnaire. A 10-item Likert-scale measure was used to capture social-media-influenced mutual fund investment decision-making and demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.839). Descriptive statistics and Spearman’s rank-order correlation were used for the analysis. The results indicate no statistically significant association between age and investment decision scores (ρ = -0.136, p = 0.283), educational qualification and investment decision scores (ρ = -0.034, p = 0.789), or frequency of financial-content consumption through social media and investment decision scores (ρ = 0.162, p = 0.218) at the 5% level of significance. Thus, the study does not find sufficient evidence to reject the respective null hypotheses. The findings suggest that the frequency of exposure to financial content on social media, considered in isolation, may not adequately explain variation in mutual fund investment decision scores. The study highlights the importance of examining the quality and credibility of digital information, investor characteristics and behavioural factors in future research.