Social Comparison and Retail Trading Behavior: An Experimental Investigation

Last registered on July 13, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Social Comparison and Retail Trading Behavior: An Experimental Investigation
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0019139
Initial registration date
July 09, 2026

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
July 13, 2026, 7:54 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
India
Region
Haryana

Primary Investigator

Name
Puneet Arora
Affiliation
Management Development Institute Gurgaon
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Divya Aggarwal
PI Affiliation
Management Development Institute Gurgaon
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Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2026-07-13
End date
2026-12-31
Keywords
Behavior, Finance & Microfinance, Gender
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study examines how information about a peer's investment outcomes affects individual investment decisions among Indian business students in a portfolio allocation setting. Participants are randomly assigned to one of four conditions that vary the information they receive about a peer's prior investment performance and the context surrounding that performance. We study whether learning about a peer's high investment outcome shifts a participant's own willingness to take on financial risk, and whether this response depends on what the favorable outcome is attributed to. We also examine whether a brief reflective exercise about one's own investment goals before decision-making moderates any such effect. Incentivised measures of risk aversion and loss aversion are collected to explore underlying mechanisms, and financial literacy, prior experience with investing and participant gender are used to examine heterogeneity in treatment responses. The study is designed to generate evidence on the role of peers in one's own investment decisions, and whether a simple behavioral nudge on retail investment platforms can mitigate some of that impact.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Aggarwal, Divya and Puneet Arora. 2026. "Social Comparison and Retail Trading Behavior: An Experimental Investigation." AEA RCT Registry. July 13. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.19139-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

Sponsors

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Manipulate peer investment returns information and its source
Intervention Start Date
2026-07-20
Intervention End Date
2026-08-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Investment allocations across riskiest to safest assets (5 assets provided in each of three rounds)
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The top two risky investment options may be combined to create a Risky investment index, while the analyses of each of the five assets will help us understand the underlying mechanism (whether the effects are driven by changes in any specific asset).

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
We also conduct incentivized risk-aversion and loss-aversion tasks to see whether they act as the mediator between intervention and outcome. The two tasks are placed between intervention and investment decisions. We also ask questions post investment but before revealing their returns to understand their optimism and overconfidence, to see whether they act as moderators of the treatment effects.

Furthermore, we also examine whether gender, prior investment experience, and financial knowledge moderates the treatment effects.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We vary the peer's information on investment returns and its source through four groups - one without any peer, and other three with a peer but two varying in source, and a third one have an additional nudge to see whether it mitigates some of the treatment effect.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
The survey is designed on GitHub and has been coded to randomly assign participants to different groups. It, however, does not stratify the randomization along any dimension.
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
500
Sample size: planned number of observations
500
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
125 in each treatment arm
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Given our directional hypotheses and planned use of baseline covariates to reduce residual variance, this sample provides 80 percent power to detect a standardised effect of d = 0.30 to 0.35 in pairwise treatment comparisons, consistent with effect sizes of similar behavioural manipulations documented in our related prior work (Arora, Dhamija and Nagori, 2026) on portfolio allocation among comparable student populations.
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
MDI IRB
IRB Approval Date
2026-07-09
IRB Approval Number
MDI IRB 2026-26
Analysis Plan