Determinants of Low Stock Market Participation: Qualitative Perspective from Pakistan Stock Exchange

Abstract

The complexity of financial markets raised the uncertainty, which in turn has substantial implications for investor trading behavior. To relieve the uncertainty investor selects investment opportunities from financially sound companies. One of the key reasons for household’s low stock market participation is the element of uncertainty. Therefore, underlying objective of current study is to explore the reasons why households do not prefer to invest their savings in stocks. The contextual setting of the study will be provided by Pakistan. The objective of the study has been achieved through conducting open-ended unstructured interviews which remain ideal to explore and offer novel insight regarding emerging phenomena. Based on qualitative investigation, the major reasons which remains significant to influence participant’s willingness to invest in stock remain fundamental and basic namely, uncertainty, lack of trust, limited financial knowledge, risk, complicated process, information transparency issues, non-Islamic views about stock investment and taxation issues remains dominant. The study has practical implications for regulators and firms listed on Pakistan stock exchange to uplift the household’s market participation through taking different initiatives.