How Real Estate Literacy and Social Capital Shape Investment Opportunity Recognition: The Mediating Role of Vigilance in Pakistan’s Real Estate Market

Abstract

The emerging market real estate industry offers very attractive opportunities; however, investors overlook lucrative investments because of the lack of knowledge, insufficient social connections, and low levels of cognitive vigilance. To address the mentioned knowledge gap, using the Theory of Planned Behavior, the impact of Knowledge and Social Capital in the recognition of investment opportunities, with the aid of Vigilance as a mediator, has been explored in this research study. Using the snowball method, data for the research has been gathered from individual investors in the property market, property developers, and real estate experts in the main cities and semi-urban areas of Pakistan. Using the measure of reliability, the validity of the research has been ensured through α of Cronbach, while correlation, regression, ANOVA, and mediation analysis has been performed through SPSS. The findings of the study show that Knowledge, as well as Social Capital, contributes greatly to increased levels of Vigilance, having a positive effect on the recognition of investment opportunities in the property market. The findings of the mediation analysis have ensured that Vigilance partially mediates in the assumed relationships between them. The study has made very valuable additions to the literature of successful decision-making in the property market from the aspect of including the role of Vigilance in the decision process, thereby broadening the application of the Behavioral Theory of the property market in the direction of understanding the processes of successful cognition in the context of the property market of the country in general, and the emerging countries in particular.