Abstract
Stock market participation remains low across the world despite favorable conditions. Recent evidence (Duraj et al., 2025) suggests a key barrier is the misperception that successful investing requires expertise, continuous monitoring, and active trading. A related policy puzzle is the limited uptake of the Aktiesparekonto (ASK), a tax-advantaged stock savings account that is planned to be introduced across the EU. At the other end of the financial spectrum, financially constrained households tend to underestimate spending on recurring subscriptions.
This pre-registered survey experiment, fielded on a representative sample of the Danish adult population (N=70,000), screens respondents on financial constraint and investment status and routes them into one of three survey and experimental arms.
Unconstrained non-investors are randomized to a video explaining the efficient market hypothesis, diversification, and index funds, or to a control video on the stock market generally. Unconstrained investors without an ASK are randomized to information about the account's features and tax advantages, or to a passive control. Constrained respondents — those unable to cover a 10,000 DKK unexpected expense without borrowing — are randomized to listing their subscriptions in detail, or to a general subscription question to prompt them to consider automatic expenses.
We measure four classes of outcomes: immediate beliefs, stated intentions, self-reported behavior in a November 2026 follow-up survey, and actual stock market entry and ASK take-up observed in Danish administrative registry data. The design traces the pipeline from beliefs to intentions to behavior across three financial-decision contexts and uses administrative data to mitigate self-report bias and intention–behavior gaps that limit much of the existing literature on household financial behavior.