One size does not fit all: Responsible investor motivation and investment performance

Abstract

Most research in socially responsible investing is about how it influences financial performance. Hardly any study investigates how it affects responsibility. We investigate how different motives of responsible investors affect portfolio design and financial and nonfinancial performance of investments. We study financial, deontological, consequentialist, and expressive motivated responsible investors. The first seek to achieve financial outperformance by relying on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information. The second avoid investing in controversial issues. The third seek to influence the most sustainable firms. The fourth try to enhance their own social identity by investing responsibly. We find that the specific motivation for socially responsible investing does not significantly affect financial performance. However, the motivation does have a substantial influence on the responsibility score of the portfolio. In particular, deontological portfolios underperform the universe regarding responsibility performance. This might reflect the origin of responsibility scoring where controversial firms usually invest more in responsibility than less controversial ones. The other portfolios all outperform the market. This has important lessons for responsible investment funds: they will need to find out about the motives of their investors to modify portfolio design when investing responsibly. “One size for all” is no option when targeting responsible investors.