Sustainable Investment and Corporate Governance Working Papers, Sustainable Investment Research Platform
No 2010/10:
The information search process of socially responsible investors
Jonas Nilsson ()
, Anna-Carin Nordvall ()
and Sofia Isberg ()
Abstract: Largely fuelled by an increasing social and ethical
concern among private investors, socially responsible investment (SRI) has,
in many ways, gone from having a marginal role to becoming a ‘mainstream’
financial service in recent years. SRI is an investment process that, in
addition to the ‘ traditional ’ fi nancial objective of investment, also
uses social, ethical or environmental (SEE) criteria when making investment
decisions. However, despite the growth of the market for SRI profi led
mutual funds, very little research has been carried out with the objective
of understanding the decision-making process of private SR-investors. In
order to address this gap in the literature, this article addresses one
stage in the SR-investor decision-making process: consumer prepurchase
information search. Using a sample of 369 SR-investors, the results of the
study indicate that SR-investors search more for SEE information, such as
the criteria used for exclusion of stocks than for ‘regular’ financial
information such as past financial return and level of risk. Moreover, the
study also indicates that involvement and perceived knowledge with regard
to both financial and SEE issues impact the nature of the information
search process of private SR mutual fund investors.
Keywords: Socially responsible investment; Ethical investment; Information search; Private investors; Mutual funds; (follow links to similar papers)
14 pages, June 16, 2010
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