Optimistic framing increases responsible investment of investment professionals

Dan Daugaard, Danielle Kent, Maroš Servátka and Le Zhang

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The global warming crisis is unlikely to abate while the world continues to collectively fund the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. Carbon divestment is urgently needed to ward off the impending climate emergency. Yet responsible investments still only account for a modest share of global assets. We conduct an incentivized artefactual field experiment to test whether framing divestment as a social norm, communicating it by a person with perceived credibility and expertise (a messenger), and highlighting optimistic attributes bolster responsible investment. Our subjects are investment professionals who have significant influence over the allocation of funds. We provide evidence that optimistic framing increases responsible investment. Assuming a comparable effect size, the observed increase would represent a $3.6 trillion USD global shift in asset allocations.

Keywords: experiment; ESG; responsible investment; optimism; framing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 G11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-11-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/119677/1/MPRA_paper_119677.pdf original version (application/pdf)

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:pra:mprapa:119677

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().