Responsible investment in the Chinese stock market

Ya Gao, Xiong Xiong and Xu Feng

Research in International Business and Finance, 2020, vol. 52, issue C

Abstract: This paper provides insights into the current development of responsible investment in the Chinese stock market. We find that responsible investment can bring portfolio benefits to investors, and institutional investors have a holding preference for stocks in responsible investment indexes. By using a national air pollution proxy, we find that investors’ pessimistic mood on days with heavy air pollution has a negative influence on the stock return of A-shares, while stocks in responsible investment indexes display improved performance over the same time period. We use aggregated trading data to study the trading preference of Chinese retail investors on days when they are influenced by air pollution, and find that their total trading ratio shows a negative influence for both A-shares and responsible investment indexes. Moreover, there is more seller-initiated trading of the whole sample but more buyer-initiated trading of stocks in responsible investment indexes on air pollution days. This finding is consistent with the different stock return performances of these two samples. Our finding extends the studies of responsible investment to emerging markets and presents new evidence about the influence of environmental factors on trading behavior and return performance.

Keywords: Responsible investment; Investors’ preference; Air pollution; Chinese stock market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G10 G11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:riibaf:v:52:y:2020:i:c:s027553191930131x

DOI: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2019.101173

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