Accounting, Organizations and Society Vol. 83 2020
The effect of mobile device use and headline focus on investor judgments
Abstract
This study conducts two experiments to examine how investors’ judgments differ when they read a press release using either a mobile device or a computer. Results show that when investors use a mobile device, information related to a specific headline (mentioning a specific part of the news like “net income” or “revenue”) influences their investment judgments more than when investors use a computer. This effect is robust to specific headlines that focus on either positive or negative information. In contrast, investors’ judgments do not differ when they use a mobile device compared to a computer and the headline is general (using the broad term “results”). We replicate our findings in a second experiment and provide evidence that the observed effect occurs because investors who use their mobile device are in a more distracted frame of mind, which in turn increases the influence of prominent information. Our results suggest that managers’ presentation choices may have a greater influence on investors as they increasingly rely on mobile devices to research and execute investment decisions.
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.aos.2019.101100
- Volume
- 83
- Pages
- 101100
- Language
- en
- Sources
- semanticscholar openalex crossref