The future of investing – sustainable and responsible investing

Abstract

The objective of this paper has been the comparison of the selected sustainable and responsible funds in the aspect of positive and negative selection, and also the identification of attitudes of the selected millennials to SRI investing (focusing on environmental, social and governance factors). The approaches to define the methods of selecting investment instruments were analysed and systematized by the authors. The systematized scientific literature allowed to establish that sustainable investing, focusing on environmental, social and governance factors (ESG), addresses not only healthy corporate behaviour, but often keeps the capital safe. Selected funds from the Barron's Magazine and the data from the Bloomberg's ESG Data Service have been used as the source data. It has been established from the available screened data that there are two funds focusing on positive selection in the environmental, social and governance areas. None of these funds is focused explicitly on negative selection only. In the ESG areas, positive selection and/or combination of positive and negative selection has its firm place. Negative choice, however, is applied predominantly within products. With respect to intergenerational differences in the investment approaches, a particular group of millennials, FBE MENDEL students, and their attitudes and views concerning the SRI has been monitored. The research has been performed in the form of an online questionnaire survey, where 96 bachelor-degree students have been engaged, 68 women and 28 men. The following nationalities are included among the respondents: Czech (69), Slovak (21), Russian (3), Ukrainian (1), Belarusian (1) and Kazakh (1). It has been established that the expected return would still prevail over sustainability and social responsibility in case of their own selection of the investment instrument, however, if the SRI investment option is offered, for example, by an investment adviser, the majority of the respondents would be willing to use this investment instrument even at the expense of a lower return.