Navigating the Digital Investment Boom: How Thai Investors Make Decisions in a New Financial Era

This study investigates Thai investors’ intentions to invest in financially innovative digital assets by extending the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) with financial literacy and trust to better reflect the context of emerging digital asset ecosystems. Using a quantitative survey design, data were collected from 360 mutual fund investors who were transitioning from traditional investment instruments to digital assets, and the hypothesized relationships among latent constructs were analyzed using structural equation modeling to assess both measurement properties and structural paths. The results indicate that attitude toward behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behav-ioral control all exert significant positive effects on investment intention, consistent with TPB. In addition, financial literacy and trust are identified as important contextual determinants: higher financial literacy is associated with greater perceived capability to evaluate risk and return, while trust in platforms, technologies, and regulatory safe-guards is linked to lower psychological barriers to participation. Among the examined factors, financial literacy and subjective norms show the strongest combined influence on investment intention. These findings suggest that, in the Thai digital asset market, intention formation is shaped not only by classical behavioral antecedents but also by investors’ knowledge levels and the social and institutional environment supporting digital financial innovations.