Investor Decision-Making in Robo-Advisory Services: A Trust-Mediated Perspective (Journal of Intelligent Decision Making and Information Science)

Summary

• The global robo-advisory assets under management market is projected to reach US$ 2.06 trillion by 2025.p.1
• India's robo-advisory market AUM is projected at US$ 23 billion, representing hardly 1.2% of the global market.p.2
• The empirical analysis was conducted using a structured survey of 285 investors in Punjab.p.7
• Trust demonstrated the strongest direct effect on intention to use robo-advisors with a path coefficient of 0.506.p.10
• The structural model explained an R2 of 0.633 for trust and an R2 of 0.589 for intention to use.p.12

Key insights

1. Trust serves as the critical psychological mediator connecting behavioral biases, innovativeness, financial awareness, and subjective norms to adoption intention.p.4
2. Financial awareness directly increases adoption intention (β = 0.294) while also significantly contributing to trust (β = 0.403).p.10
3. Behavioral biases, innovativeness, and subjective norms show no significant direct effect on adoption intention, functioning entirely through trust.p.11
4. Trust exerts the strongest direct positive influence on an investor's intention to adopt robo-advisory services (β = 0.506).p.10
5. Financial awareness exerts the largest indirect effect on adoption intention through trust (β = 0.203).p.10