“COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF DETERMINANTS INFLUENCING ETF INVESTMENT INTENTION AMONG INDIAN RETAIL INVESTORS: A PLS-SEM MULTI-GROUP AND IPMA APPROACH”

Abstract

This study examines whether the structural relationships underlying retail investors’ intention to invest in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) differ between male and female investors in India. A cross-sectional survey of 507 retail investors was analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The proposed framework brings together financial advertisement antecedents, behavioural determinants and financial literacy determinants. Measurement and structural models were assessed for the full sample and separately for male and female respondents. The model explained 79.2% of the variance in Investor Intention for the complete sample and 80.2% for each gender group. The corresponding Q² Predict values were 0.775, 0.763 and 0.783. Bootstrapped PLS-MGA and the Welch–Satterthwaite procedure were subsequently used to determine whether the observed group differences were statistically meaningful. Of the fifteen structural relationships examined, only the path from Herding Behaviour to Investor Intention differed significantly between males and females. For male respondents, the relationship was negative and non-significant (β = −0.018), whereas for female respondents it was positive and significant (β = 0.173); the between-group difference was −0.191             (p < 0.001). The remaining paths did not exhibit statistically significant gender differences. IPMA further indicated that Informative Influence and Attitude occupied prominent positions across the analyses, while Perceived Risk showed a negative importance value. Overall, the evidence indicates that gender-related variation should be examined at the level of individual structural relationships rather than inferred from differences in within-group significance.