Encouraging Broker and Adviser Background Checks: A Randomized Study on Twitter

Abstract

We conducted a randomized online study of messaging on twitter to encourage retail investors to check the background of their investment professional. Our study tested different tweets attempting to motivate investors by emphasizing aspirations, mistrust, and loss aversion. We found that our motivational tweets did not perform better than our control informational tweet. In contrast, there appears to be evidence that shorter, simpler calls to action worked best in promoting views, engagements, and clicks on the SEC website. There is also some evidence of greater (lower) engagement at the beginning (end) of the week. Finally, there was only limited attrition in views and engagements over time with high turnover in accounts engaging tweets over the course of the study.

Keywords: randomized control trial, social media, brokers, investment advisers, behavioral finance

JEL Classification: D14, D18, G02, G24