No 2009/5: Investment Institutions’ Beliefs about and Attitudes toward Socially Responsible Investment (SRI): A Comparison between SRI and non-SRI Management

Abstract: This paper investigates psychological drivers and financial motives that may influence major Swedish investments institutions to adopt Socially Responsible Investment (SRI). Based on an instrument that captures concepts in the Value-Belief-Norm theory by Stern et al. (1999), and potential financial beliefs that may influence investors’ SRI intentions, a survey was addressed to all major Swedish investments institutions. Fifty-eight respondents from 17 different investment institutions participated in the survey among those, 31 were conventional (non-SRI investors) and 27 socially responsible investors. Our results show that conventional and SRI investors share similar beliefs about short- and long-term performance on SRI investments in that SRI gives less return in the short term but slightly more than conventional investments in the longer run. However, SRI investors express significantly more interest in increasing their future SRI investments than conventional investors do. We discover that future SRI is not influenced by social and environmental concerns. Rather, financial beliefs about risk and beliefs about increased market shares drive SRI forward. The business case for SRI seems thus to be the only reason for major investment institutions to adopt SRI.

Keywords: Investment decisions; financial markets; socially responsible investments; values; intentions

23 pages, September 2, 2009

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