Exploring the stock market participation of the Dutch population

Replicating and extending a 2014 paper written by Dimmock, Kouwenberg and Wakker, this study investigates the relation between stock market participation and ambiguity attitudes along with several demographic variables. The extension involves the introduction of interaction terms between gender and ambiguity and risk attitudes in the regression analysis. Most notably, women are found to be more risk averse than men, while men exhibit higher stock market participation. The analysis of the data also indicated that ambiguity aversion does not differ between Dutch men and women, and holds no significant explanatory power over stock market participation. In contrast, household income, gender, risk aversion and household size are significant predictors for stock market participation. Lastly, estimations of the interaction terms showed that neither risk nor ambiguity attitudes have a significant impact on the gender gap in stock market participation decision.