The moderating role of external monitoring in Prioritizing Investors' Beliefs and Factors Influencing Those Beliefs in the Iran Capital Market Using Multi-Criteria Decision Making Methods

Financial and investment issues are one of the essential areas of every person's life that make one makes many decisions in different situations; however, it is the beliefs of the individual that make the decisions and shape their behavior in the financial arena. Referring to the lack of in-depth and, as far as possible, comprehensive research in this regard in the Iran context, a careful examination of the factors influencing investor beliefs and the importance of each factor in making an investment seems necessary in analyzing behavior, justifying a decision, and providing effective solutions to improve the process of judgment and decision making. So, the purpose of this study is to identify investor's beliefs, factors influencing them and rank the categories in the capital market of Iran. To this end, after identifying the beliefs of investors and the factors affecting them by interview, the hierarchical analysis process (AHP) and the DEMATEL technique have been used to prioritizing investors' beliefs and ranking the factors affecting them, respectively. Following a deep interview with 24 experts and the collection of beliefs and causal factors through coding, a questionnaire was prepared to prioritize the identified factors and was completed by experts who, in addition to having sufficient knowledge about investor's behavior were well acquainted with Iran capital market. Based on the findings of the research, it was found that among the 14 beliefs known by the experts, over confidence, loss aversion, self- attribution, self-control and regret – aversion are the most significant beliefs observed in the Iran capital market. In addition, among the six causal factors identified, emotions, investor capacity limitations for processing existing information and their lack of awareness of the fundamental issues of economy and investment were identified as the most important factors influencing investors' beliefs.