EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Between impact and returns: Private investors and the sustainable development goals

Falko Paetzold, Timo Busch, Sebastian Utz and Anne Kellers

Business Strategy and the Environment, 2022, vol. 31, issue 7, 3182-3197

Abstract: We investigate the expectations of wealthy private investors regarding the impact and financial return of sustainable investments. Our paper focuses on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as a framework for investors' attempts to create impact. We analyze the behavior of 60 high‐net‐worth individuals (HNWIs), a powerful yet overlooked investor segment. Our results show large allocations in line with the SDGs, which demonstrates these investors' aim of achieving real‐word changes. Furthermore, we show that these “impact investors” have a clear preference for SDGs that are associated with high financial returns. As such, we confirm that both impact and attractive financial returns are expected. Our findings provide rich, deep insights into how HNWIs practice impact investing and their underlying motivations. We outline practical implications for different stakeholders, notably regarding the fact that financially attractive SDGs are likely to attract substantial amounts of capital, with other SDGs remaining underfunded.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.3070

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:31:y:2022:i:7:p:3182-3197

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://onlinelibrary ... 1002/(ISSN)1099-0836

Access Statistics for this article

Business Strategy and the Environment is currently edited by Richard Welford

More articles in Business Strategy and the Environment from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:31:y:2022:i:7:p:3182-3197