Psychological Biases in Entrepreneurial Investment Decision-Making: Evidence from Individual Investors in Vietnam

The research examines how psychological factors influence the investment choices of individual investors in Vietnam's stock market from 2023 to 2024, with a particular focus on entrepreneurial and entrepreneurial-oriented investment decision-making in an emerging Asian economy. The purpose is to help individual investors and entrepreneurially active individuals refine their investment strategies and support more informed, long-term, and sustainability-oriented financial decision-making, thereby enhancing the market’s overall quality. Using a comprehensive analytical model grounded in behavioral finance and entrepreneurial decision theory, the research examines the effects of herding behavior, anchoring bias, regret aversion, and over-optimism on investment decisions. The results indicate that these psychological factors influence decisions positively, with herd mentality having the greatest impact, followed by anchoring bias, regret aversion, and over-optimism in descending order. Additionally, the study reveals significant differences in decision-making among investors from various occupational sectors, age groups, and levels of investment experience. These findings provide valuable insights for entrepreneurial finance, investor education, and sustainable investment decision-making, and contribute to the development of a more robust and resilient financial environment supporting entrepreneurship and sustainable economic development in Vietnam. In this study, entrepreneurial investment decisions are understood as opportunity-driven and risk-bearing financial decisions made by individuals who may also engage in entrepreneurial, self-employed, or small business activities.