ABSTRACT
This chapter explores concepts and literature concerning investment decision-making and the position of affect and emotion within this decision-making. It then considers socio-cultural theories of the turn to affect as an alternative way to conceptualise the affect and emotion of investing. This chapter begins with observations about the literature on financial decision-making. What little work has been produced on the subject takes a standard finance theory perspective of rational decision-making. This focus on formal, planned, and rational decision precludes the impingement of affect and emotion and is in line with the literature on other types of decision-making in hospitality. As a result, we review investment decision-making and the impingement of affect and emotion thereon taking a socio-cultural rather than a hospitality context-specific perspective. Recent developments in the social sciences and, particularly, cultural studies, offer the opportunity for novel insights into emotion from a new perspective. To argue this position, this chapter examines the growth of academic interest in emotion and affect as a way to understand the social world and consider what is meant by the (possibly) distinct but closely related concepts of affect and emotion. Further, this chapter analyses the features of affect and emotion with the potential to illuminate financial decision-making activity.
