Robo-advisors: A substitute for human financial advice?

Using representative US investor data, we investigate whether automated financial advisors, also referred to as robo-advisors, reduce investors' demand for human financial advice offered by financial service providers. Our results provide a strong negative relationship between using robo-advisors and seeking human financial advice. We show that the substitution effect of robo-advisors is especially driven by investors who fear to be victimized by investment fraud. Our findings suggest that robo-advisors seem to offer a valid alternative for seeking investment advice, especially among those investors who worry about potential conflicts of interest that appear in the context of human financial advice. (c) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.