The link between corporate sustainability and willingness to invest: new evidence from the field of ethical investments

In recent decades, academia has addressed a wide range of research topics in the field of ethical decision-making. Besides a great amount of research on ethical consumption, also the domain of ethical investments increasingly moves in the focus of scholars. While in this area most research focuses on whether socially or environmentally sustainable businesses outperform traditional investments financially or investigates the character traits as well as other socio-demographic factors of ethical investors, the impact of sustainable corporate conduct on the investment intentions of private investors still requires further research. Hence, we conducted two studies to shed more light on this highly relevant topic. After discussing the current state of research, in our first empirical study, we explore whether besides the traditional triad of risk, return, and liquidity, also sustainability exerts a significant impact on the willingness to invest. As hypothesized, we find that sustainability shows a clear and decisive impact in addition to the traditional factors. In a consecutive study, we investigate deeper into the sustainability-willingness to invest link. Here, our results show that improved sustainability might not pay off in terms of investment attractiveness, however and conversely, it certainly harms to conduct business in a non-sustainable manner, which cannot even be compensated by an increased return.