EU-Accession Sentiment and Cognitive Biases in Coastal Real Estate Investment: Evidence from Albania

This paper looks into cognitive biases in real estate investment decisions in an emerging market in Europe on the optimism of Albania joining the European Union. Based on a cross-sectional survey of 462 respondents from the Vlora coastal region, this study employs partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the nexus between EU-accession optimism, anchoring, overconfidence, herding, price expectation and investment intention. EU-accession optimism has a strong and statistically significant positive influence on both investment intention and price expectations. Anchoring plays a meaningful mediating role in translating optimism into investment behavior, while overconfidence and herding further amplify sentiment-driven investment intentions. The multi-group analysis (MGA) indicates behavioral heterogeneity across investor groups; differences should be interpreted with caution considering the absence of formal measurement invariance testing. By looking at EU accession as a sentiment-based process rather than a macroeconomic factor, this study contributes to the behavioral finance literature by explaining how institutional optimism works with the cognitive mechanism in investment decisions on real assets.