Neuroscience and consumer financial behavior

Consumer financial behavior is often examined using qualitative and quantitative methods. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce neuroscience as an alternative method that behavioral finance researchers can consider to study consumer financial behavior. To do so, this chapter highlights the neuroscientific methods that are available to record neural activity inside and outside the brain along with the methods to manipulate neural activity. In addition, this chapter conducts a systematic literature review and presents a collection of neuroscientific findings on consumer financial behavior from the literature (i.e., consumer characteristic, information processing, financial information, non-financial information, message presentation, market spinning, and realization utility). This chapter concludes with future research directions (e.g., alternative consumer characteristic, ethics, product type, message framing, information density, information complexity, and sustainability) that could be considered by researchers interested to study consumer financial behavior using neuroscientific methods.