1.
Priya
– Research Scholar, Faculty of Commerce, BHU, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India.
2.
Roli Gupta
ID
– Research Scholar, Faculty of Commerce, BHU, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India.
3.
Aditya Prajapati
– Research Scholar, Faculty of Commerce, BHU, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India.
4.
Ashish Kant Chaudhari
– Assistant Professor, Faculty of Commerce, BHU, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Received 19-Dec-2025
Accepted 05-Mar-2026
Published 09-Oct-2026
Abstract
The current study aims to analyse the investment willingness of retail investors by employing one of the most widely known
and popular theories, i.e., theory of planned behaviour (TPB), and extending it with herding. The study includes herding behaviour as an
additional construct in the TPB model, as in financial markets, where people often adjust their actions rapidly in response to the actions
of others, subjective norms alone fail to capture this crowd-following tendency. Herding gives the study a more comprehensive overview of
investor behaviour. A quantitative method was used to gather information from 375 Indian respondents using structured questionnaires that
were distributed online through convenience sampling, a non-probability method due to time and cost constraints. Smart-PLS was employed
to analyse the collected data. Prior researchers have solely employed TPB to analyse investment intention or have extended the theory
with other variables such as financial knowledge, risk tolerance, other cognitive biases, etc. As far as we know no prior work has extended
TPB to incorporate herding behaviour, leading to the originality of our research work. The findings of the study reflect that retail investor
investment intention is strongly affected by key components of the TPB model as well as herding. The current study has the following
practical implications: it will help financial educators create training programmes that are effective, increase investor understanding and
knowledge of various biases, and assist policymakers in formulating laws that will reduce herd-driven bubbles.
Keywords Behavioural Biases, Herd Behaviour, Investment Intention, Investment Performance, SEM, Theory of Planned Behaviour
