"Beat the market!" or "Take care of your savings": Can language in bank advertisements influence women's attitudes towards finance? An experimental comparison of different - inclusive - languages to counter the gender gap in finance

IF 1.6 3区经济学 Q2 ECONOMICS

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics Pub Date : 2025-06-15 DOI:10.1016/j.socec.2025.102399

Valeria Amata Giannella , Claudia Manzi , Eleonora Crapolicchio , Henriette Prast

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Abstract

Women tend to invest less than men and are less likely to accumulate wealth over time. Research suggests that financial discourse in the media predominantly targets men (Prast et al., 2018), potentially contributing to gender disparities in investment behaviour. We present two experimental studies conducted in Italy to examine whether modifying financial discourses can enhance women’s engagement with investments. Study 1 (N = 401 workers) tested the impact of different types of metaphors (stereotypically masculine vs stereotypically feminine vs neutral) used in financial advertising, on attitudes and intentional behaviours. Study 2 (N = 206 workers) explored the effects of a mixed-inclusive language, using both masculine and feminine metaphors simultaneously. Results indicate that mixed-inclusive communication improves both attitudes and behavioural intentions in women and men.

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“战胜市场！”或“照顾好你的储蓄”：银行广告中的语言会影响女性对金融的态度吗？不同包容性语言对抗金融性别差距的实验比较

女性往往比男性投资更少，也不太可能随着时间的推移积累财富。研究表明，媒体中的金融话语主要针对男性（Prast等人，2018），这可能导致投资行为中的性别差异。我们提出了在意大利进行的两项实验研究，以检验修改金融话语是否可以提高妇女对投资的参与。研究1 （N = 401名员工）测试了金融广告中使用的不同类型的隐喻（刻板的男性化、刻板的女性化、中性化）对态度和故意行为的影响。研究2 （N = 206名员工）探讨了混合包容性语言的影响，同时使用男性和女性隐喻。结果表明，混合包容性沟通改善了女性和男性的态度和行为意图。

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来源期刊

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

2.60

自引率

12.50%

发文量

113

审稿时长

83 days

期刊介绍： The Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly the Journal of Socio-Economics) welcomes submissions that deal with various economic topics but also involve issues that are related to other social sciences, especially psychology, or use experimental methods of inquiry. Thus, contributions in behavioral economics, experimental economics, economic psychology, and judgment and decision making are especially welcome. The journal is open to different research methodologies, as long as they are relevant to the topic and employed rigorously. Possible methodologies include, for example, experiments, surveys, empirical work, theoretical models, meta-analyses, case studies, and simulation-based analyses. Literature reviews that integrate findings from many studies are also welcome, but they should synthesize the literature in a useful manner and provide substantial contribution beyond what the reader could get by simply reading the abstracts of the cited papers. In empirical work, it is important that the results are not only statistically significant but also economically significant. A high contribution-to-length ratio is expected from published articles and therefore papers should not be unnecessarily long, and short articles are welcome. Articles should be written in a manner that is intelligible to our generalist readership. Book reviews are generally solicited but occasionally unsolicited reviews will also be published. Contact the Book Review Editor for related inquiries.