of course a good investor will first do its own research (whitepaper, roadmap and etc), besides that what is your biggest motivation?
All of them put together is my biggest motivation. This is money we are talking about, something I worked hard to earn and Im not going to be stupid again in my life to let anyone make away with my money, no way, I cant. Ive been fooled a lot of times so now Im being very careful and wont let anyone make a fool of me anymore.
The tricky way when we tend to invest in ICO, and you are right when choosing a project that according to our research will be good and potential but in the end the project is a scam, it looks stupid for me. But in other hands, investments in ICOs that we know are very promising and people have experienced, so that make the new investors arrive. We need a regulation that oversees and runs an ICO project, it will make us comfortable and make the research we did on the ICO useful.