Liquidity Preference and Its Behavioural Cost on Long-Term Investment Outcomes

This study looks at how young people in Bangalore, like those between 22 and 35, tend to hold onto too much cash instead of investing it long term, and how that choice ends up costing them in terms of better returns later on. I am drawing from some theories here, you know, the Keynesian one on liquidity preference, and Tobins portfolio balance idea, plus the prospect theory from Kahneman and Tversky, and that behavioral portfolio thing by Shefrin and Statman. All of these help explain the psychological stuff pushing people toward this, things like feeling anxious about money, hating losses more than usual, and just perceiving risk in a way that makes them play it safe. The main drivers seem to be financial anxiety, loss aversion, and how they see risks, which lead to putting money in the wrong places, not enough in growth assets or whatever. We used a survey back in March 2026 with 128 people from that age group, structured questions to test five hypotheses. Ran chi square tests, some simple linear regressions, multiple ones too, and a one way ANOVA to check things out. Findings showed financial anxiety really predicts liquidity preference strongly, with a beta of 0.507 and p less than 0.001, and loss aversion was even a bit higher at 0.520, same p value. But when you look at the multiple regression, risk perception took over as the big one, beta 0.282, p under 0.01. There was this clear negative link between how much liquidity they hold and allocating to growth assets, chi square 53.04, p way under 0.001, and Cramers V at 0.372, which means its a decent association. Income level did not moderate the anxiety to liquidity thing, F was 1.796, p 0.151, so no effect there. It feels like this adds some new evidence, tying those old finance theories with behavioral ones to how young city investors act in places like India, an emerging economy. Some parts of it get messy, like how exactly risk perception dominates, but the inverse relationship stands out. Not everything is fully clear, maybe income plays a role in other ways I am not sure about.