When we think about violent conflicts and how to reduce them, the focus tends to be on military or territorial considerations. Often neglected is the role of economics and its impact in shaping attitudes towards peace.

Everyone wants peace, but we don’t always vote for it. What might make us more inclined to do so? That’s the question asked in fascinating research focusing on Israeli voters who have had a busy year declining (in two elections so far) to give Benjamin Netanyahu a fifth term as prime minister. Academics in California and Israel dug deep into how participating in financial markets (owning and trading shares) would affect individuals’ attitudes and votes.

Before the 2015 elections, researchers randomly assigned financial assets to likely voters, with incentives to trade, before measuring their attitudes and voting behaviour. The results? Getting involved in the stock market shifted voters towards parties more supportive of the peace process, increasing those parties’ vote share by 5 percentage points.

The results weren’t driven by what you might expect: it wasn’t about those holding investments having a financial incentive to favour peace – even those who had sold their assets before polling day were more likely to vote for pro-peace parties. Instead, engaging with financial markets seems to lead to voters taking a broader view of the costs of conflict, placing more emphasis on economic costs over others.

Given that some estimates point to a $123bn 10-year economic dividend to Israelis, and $50bn to Palestinians from ending the conflict, it’s worth learning any lessons we can on how to make peace more likely.

• Torsten Bell is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation. Read more at resolutionfoundation.org