Correlates of Ethical Investing and the Issue of Sustainability

Adrian Furnham (), Oyvind Martinsen and Jan Ketil Arnulf
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Adrian Furnham: Department of Leadership and Organisational Behaviour, BI Norwegian Business School, Nydalsveien 37, 0484 Oslo, Norway
Oyvind Martinsen: Department of Leadership and Organisational Behaviour, BI Norwegian Business School, Nydalsveien 37, 0484 Oslo, Norway
Jan Ketil Arnulf: Department of Leadership and Organisational Behaviour, BI Norwegian Business School, Nydalsveien 37, 0484 Oslo, Norway

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 10, 1-14

Abstract: This paper was concerned with individual difference correlates of preferences for three issues associated with ethical investing. Five hundred adults completed a long, 60-item, questionnaire concerning personal details, including demographic (sex, age, education) and ideological (political and religious beliefs), as well as a three-part measure of their investment attitudes: what investments to avoid, what general issues to consider when investing and what people issues to consider when investing. The results indicated that they most wanted to avoid investments concerning weapons, animal testing and fossil fuels. The most important issues when investing were thought to be pollution, deforestation and carbon footprint, which all have at heart the sustainability philosophy. With regards to workers, they noted child labour, wages and worker rights as the most important issues. Correlations showed relatively few demographic correlates, but there were a number of religious belief and political attitude correlates of investment preferences. The strongest relationship was between political beliefs and anything associated with global warming. Implications and limitations are acknowledged, in particular with respect to having rank-order data and not knowing important information about the respondents.

Keywords: portfolio; moral; social responsibility; profits; environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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