Abstract

This study examines the determinants of investment decision quality among individual investors in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) financial market. As digital investment platforms continue to expand access to financial information and investment opportunities, understanding the drivers of effective investment decisions has become increasingly important for investors. Integrating insights from financial literacy, behavioral finance, trust and disclosure, and technology acceptance perspectives, the study develops a unified framework to examine how financial literacy and awareness, trust, transparency and disclosure, as well as digital platform support jointly shape the quality of investment decisions. Drawing on survey data from 208 individual investors with varying levels of investment experience, the study employs correlation and multiple regression analyses to examine the proposed relationships. The results reveal positive bivariate associations between investment decision quality and all three explanatory factors. In the multivariate model, however, only financial literacy and awareness and digital platform support remain statistically significant, with digital platform support emerging as exerting the largest statistically significant effect on decision quality. The independent effect of trust, transparency, and disclosure attenuates to non-significance, suggesting that its effect largely overlaps with financial literacy and digital platform support rather than representing a distinct independent contribution. The findings indicate that investor outcomes depend not only on access to information but also on investors’ ability to understand, interpret, and apply that information through effective digital support mechanisms. The study contributes to the investment decision-making literature by providing an integrated empirical framework and new evidence from the UAE as an underexplored market context. The findings provide indicative implications for investor education initiatives, financial institutions, and digital platform providers within the sampled context of an increasingly digital financial environment.

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