SOCIAL NETWORK AND THE DIFFUSION OF INVESTMENT BELIEFS: THEORETICAL EXPERIMENT AND THE CASES OF GAMESTOP SAGA

Abstract

It is critical to understand how investment beliefs are transmitted across a community and affect individuals' investment decisions, given the proliferation of online social networks. This study proposes a novel approach to capture the cognitive effects (dissonance and exposure), which outperforms previous social contagion models in terms of expressive power. The cognitive model was analyzed across a variety of network topologies and communications patterns. It is found that the cognitive diffusion models that account for the difference in belief scores between previous and new beliefs performed as expected. This study establishes a framework under which researchers studying financial behaviors and social contagion in finance could collaborate to better understand individual investments' decisions.