Since the Internet is an important information intermediary, this paper examines whether and how the Internet affects private insurance participation.Using national representative household survey data from China, we show that the Internet has a significant positive effect on households' private insurance participation. Then, we use both an instrumental variable analysis and propensity score matching to identify this causal effect. Furthermore, we find that this positive effect of the Internet is mainly driven by positive information on News Portals. In contrast, information regarding insurance on BBSs is usually negative and, thus, has a deterrent effect on insurance participation. Additionally, we examine the role of trust in these impacts. The results show that netizens with a high level of trust are more likely to purchase insurance, indicating that trusting the information received online is an essential factor for participating in private insurance.

This study focuses on the role of information diversity in household portfolio diversification, using data from the China Household Financial Survey. We first propose a novel information diversity index which incorporates both information channels and information fields (i.e., information topics people pay attention to). Subsequently, empirical tests demonstrate that information diversity significantly affects households' participation in stock, fund and insurance markets. We further construct a household portfolio diversification index and find that information diversity also has a significant positive effect on portfolio diversification. Furthermore, a positive relationship between information diversity and portfolio returns is confirmed. Finally, this study identifies the crucial role of economic and financial information; if this information is lacking, information diversity does not have the same positive impact in some cases.

PurposeThis paper studies the effects of lottery preference on stock market participation at the macro level.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use the abnormal search volume intensity for lottery-related keywords from the Baidu search engine to capture retail investors' lottery preference. To measure stock market participation, they use five different macro-level measures from various angles. They perform the time series regression analysis in their empirical study.FindingsFirst, the validation tests show that the lottery preference index in this study is reasonable. Further, the authors find that lottery preference increases people's propensity to enter and trade in the stock market. Besides, they find that the effect on trading behavior is asymmetric, that is, high lottery preference has a more significant impact on trading behavior than low lottery preference. However, lottery preference has no significant effect on the stockholding.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the growing literature that examines the determinants of stock market participation and the role of lottery/gambling preference in the financial market. It also provides direct and novel evidence for Statman's (2002) conclusions about the similarity of lottery players and stock traders.