Press Release of 30 July 2024 - CONSOB AND ITS ACTIVITIES
Social media beats print and web newspapers and ranks third, after the Internet and TV, in the ranking of the sources of information most used by Italian households to orient themselves in their investment choices. The trend to use social media is more pronounced among young people, women, those with less basic financial knowledge and less money to invest. The phenomenon increases exposure to the risk of falling into the trap of financial fraud or making uninformed investment decisions.
This is one of the findings of the latest Report on financial investments of Italian households, published today by Consob.
For the first time, the study also contains a section, the third, dedicated to the sources of information Italian households draw from when it comes to investing their savings.
The survey - conducted in the first quarter of this year on a sample of more than 2,000 investors, representative of financial decision-makers in households in our country - shows that the Internet is by far the most widely used channel for searching for information aimed at making an investment decision. Sixty-seven percent of respondents source their information on the web. In second place is television (43 percent). This is followed with 36 percent by social media (on a par with financial intermediary sites or apps). Print and online newspapers are used by 34 percent of respondents, a percentage that drops to 33 percent for institutions' sites.
The relevance of social media as a source of information in the financial field is higher for 18–34-year-olds (58 percent), women (42 percent vs. 34 percent of men), households managing sums of less than 50,000 euros (41 percent vs. 33 percent of those with higher assets), and those with a low level of financial education (55 percent vs. 33 percent). However, once information is gathered in the first orientation phase, when it comes to the final decision on how to invest one's money, the percentage of respondents who are guided by the guidance found on social media drops to 3 percent.
The survey, now in its ninth edition this year, also highlights the rapid growth of cryptocurrencies among Italian households. Between 2022 and 2024, the percentage of respondents claiming to have cryptocurrencies in their portfolios more than doubled, from 8 percent to 18 percent, although the choice is not always associated with actual knowledge of the characteristics of this type of digital asset. Investments qualified as sustainable are also on the rise, present in 2024 in the piggy bank of 20 percent of respondents compared to 11 percent in 2022.
The study also highlights that the financial decision maker is usually the highest income earning member of the household and is also the main person responsible for managing finances. In 78 percent of cases, he is a man with an average age of 51. This confirms, therefore, the well-established gender gap that characterizes the Italian context with reference not only to salary aspects but also to social and cultural aspects. The priority objective in investment choices is capital protection (81 percent) compared with 55 percent of respondents who aim, instead, for capital growth.
