1. The Impact of the Religious Prejudice of Muslim People on Their Financial Investments
Oğuz Kaan Yavuz
Today ı will talk about my research about the impact of the religious prejudice of muslim people on their financial investments. I had some observations in real life about this topic and ı tested whether my thesis was true or not. The reason ı chose this topic was really interesting ı think. Once ı learnt the usage of the repo rate and ı learnt from my father that the rent price of our house was 650 tl. ı calculated our return if we invested our money to the repo rate and ı found out that we could earn 900 tl. ı told him this and he replied that he has nothing to do with earning interest because he was thinking that it is forbidden by islam. And thats why ı chose this topic to find out whether it is a general perception or not.

2. Aim
Objective of my research is to understand the general impact of the religious bias which is about interest earned & expenditure which is forbidden by Islam on the investment purposes of Muslim people in Turkey.

3. Literature
Alper Ates made a survey for his thesis, which is about the effect of religious biases on muslim people’s investment decision. It was concluded : %45 It does not effect my decision %55 it effects my decision
But there is so important point. This survey has not got a part measuring the PARTICIPANTs religious sensitiveness or directly question as do you invest the interest (with zero risk). This survey has only one question about effects of religious biases on investment decision and this results i think is not efficient.

4. About Survey
My survey had 12 question, and also it was an Online Survey, only thing i needed to do was to prepare the survey and share it on social web sites.
My sample consists 79 people but 11 of them were eleminated because of several reasons (for example 2-3 person completed more than one survey etc.)

5. Difficulties
The most compelling thing to me during my research was preparing the survey questions. Because questions must be simple to understand and they must help my research simultaneously.
It was really so hard

6. Survey Results
And finally

15. İn addition, mean of income level of my sample is 2697,872 TL
İn addition, mean of income level of my sample is 2697,872 TL. And also this income level is higher than minumum wage level of turkey.

16. Econometric Analysis
I used Logistic Model for testing and modelling my survey answers. Mainly my dependent variables are Interest Earning and Interest Expenditure. If people earn interest or thinking to earn interest, they get ‘1’ but the dependent variable will get ‘0’ in the opposite case. If people expenditure with interest get ‘1’, but the dependent variable will also get ‘0’ in the opposite case.
In addition i used gretl econometric program during the analysis.

17. The Measurement of Dependent Variables:
Interest Expenditure : If at least one of the questions about loan from a bank are answered with ‘yes’, Interest Expenditure get ‘1’. If All of this questions answered ‘No’, then dependent variable of Interest Expenditure will get ‘0’.

18. Interest Earning: If at least one of the questions about earning interest with several insturements are answered with ‘yes’, then Interest earning will get ‘1’, but if all of the questions are answered with ‘no’ then interest earning get ‘0’.

19. The Measurement of Independent Variables
Education: get ‘1’ if people has higher than high school diploma, if not get ‘0’.
All ‘Yes’, ‘No’ questions and Religious Questions 1 and 3 : Yes = 1, No = 0.
Religious Sensitiveness question (Religious Question 2) : Sensitiveness = 1, Opposite = 0
Gender: 1 = Women, 0 = Men

20. Analysis Results Interest Expenditure: Coefficient Std. Error z
p-value
const
0.5040
0.6143
religious_Q1
0.9116
0.7328
0.4637
religious_Q2
0.6318
0.5275
religious_Q3 −
−0.1816
0.8559
Education −
−0.6834
0.4943
Income
1.3072
0.1912
Gender
0.6323
0.5272
There is no significancy any independent variable and also there is no power of expalanatory variable to explain the Independent variable. İts means that there is no correlation between Religious Biases and Interest Expenditure. And also I expect this because of my observation in my life. There is good news for Girls, also there is no correlation between using credit card and being a women According to my reasearch because gender part is also insignificant.

21. 2. Interest Earning: Missing or incomplete observations dropped: 16
Dependent variable: Intrest_earn
Standard errors based on Hessian
Coefficient
Std. Error z
p-value
const
0.6059
0.5446
religious_Q1 −
−1.8065
0.0708 *
religious_Q2 −
−2.0742
0.0381 **
religious_Q3 −
−1.0728
0.2834
Education
0.0896
0.9286
Income
1.0681
0.2855
Sex
0.1790
0.8580
In interest earning I have 3 different model because of doesn’t answered question about education. So first model actually now we are seeing has not 16 variables. Even so there is two significance independent variable which are reading holly book in mother tongue and sensitiveness of religious restrictions. There is negatively relationship between these independet variables and interest earning. İts mean that For example I am a muslim people and I read Quran in turkish I don’t invest my money to interest or I said that I'm being very careful about religious prohibitions and you can say he do not invest his money or savings in interest.

22. Regulation with all 16 peoples have univercity diploma:
Bağımlı değişken: Intrest_earn
Hesseyen'e dayalı ölçünlü hatalar
Katsayı
Ölç. Hata z
p-değeri
const
0,938683
1,27674
0,7352
0,4622
Gender 0,
0,778002
0,0078
0,9938
Education
0,503672
0,877551
0,5740
0,5660
Income 0, 0,
1,7559
0,0791 *
religious_Q1
−2,03194
0,807528
−2,5163
0,0119 **
religious_Q2
−3,13232
1,24461
−2,5167
0,0118
religious_Q3
−1,29543
0,820519
−1,5788
0,1144
Now I consider peoples more educated, its means that I varsayıyorum ki 16 people has higher than univercity diploma we have 3 significance variable again religious 1 and 2 Questions significant but in addition to them Income will significance. But there is more interesting situation than that which is signifance level of religious 1 and religious 2 question increase. Its mean that If increase the education, muslim people (who has religious biases) their income level is not so high we understand that because of the correlation between income and dependent variable is positive so if someone earn money more they can invest their money to the interest.

23. Regulation with all 16 peoples have not univercity diploma:
Bağımlı değişken: Intrest_earn
Hesseyen'e dayalı ölçünlü hatalar
Katsayı
Ölç. Hata z
p-değeri
const
1,70154
1,15658
1,4712
0,1412
Sex
−0,12349
0,78729
−0,1569
0,8754
Education
−0,357945
0,743512
−0,4814
0,6302
Income 0, 0,
1,5346
0,1249
religious_Q1
−1,97705
0,808817
−2,4444
0,0145 **
religious_Q2
−3,34894
1,2566
−2,6651
0,0077
***
religious_Q3
−1,23637
0,815015
−1,5170
0,1293
There is really interesting situation again. The significance level of Religious Question 1 (reading Quran in turkish) < the previous data (when education level high) but also The significance level of Religious Question 2 (sensetiveness) > the previous data (when education level high) its mean that if there is low education level of muslim people, there will be the religious sensetiveness of restirictions play main role (religious biases about earning interest), but if education level will high, there is both of reading Quran and sensetiveness of restirictions of their religion’s playing main role (religious biases about earning interest).

24. Conclusion
To sum up, there is no correlation between interest expenditure and religious biases. However, there is a correlation between interest earning and religious biases. I was expecting this results as a result of my observations in real life and my thesis about this topic did really came true.