Seeding new ventures: green thumbs not fertile fields: Individual and environmental drivers of informal investment

Recent studies of informal investment have focused on individual characteristics and behaviour. Behavioural features are important drivers of the decision to invest in others' businesses, and the heterogeneity of informal investors in terms of age, education, income, and working status has also been noted. While the decision to invest in another person's business is an individual behaviour, it is embedded in the larger environmental context. However, to date, there has been a lack of investigation into how different environmental factors in the form of economic, political, educational, or societal attributes affect the level of informal investment decision. The main reason is limited data sets. The GEM adult population survey of nearly 300,000 individuals in 29 countries enables an investigation the significance of both the individual and environmental factors driving informal investment.