How to Elicit Preferences for Sustainable Investments?
How can institutional investors, such as pension providers, identify their clients' preferences for SRI? This is a challenge for two reasons. First, the method of eliciting these preferences must overcome the question or effects of social desirability. Second, preference for SRI depends on the extent to which it affects expected financial returns. In this project, we will develop and validate scientific methods to elicit preferences and beliefs for SRI and apply them to different financial institutions in different European countries. We will measure and analyse investors' preferences and beliefs in both passive and active choice environments, by investigating delegated investments and direct individual investments. Furthermore, we will investigate the role of personal experiences and biased memories of them in both contexts. Finally, we will validate the results for different types of institutional setups and countries.
This project will make an academic, practical and policy contribution by providing empirical evidence on when and why investor sustainability preferences and beliefs influence investment behaviour. Moreover, a valid methodology for eliciting sustainability preferences will be developed, which can serve as a basis for future research and inform both pension managers and policymakers.
Read all project publications here.
For this project, €180,000 PPP surcharge is being used.
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