Defaulting Investors Toward Sustainability: A Field Experiment

Lars Hornuf, Christoph Merkle and Stefan Zeisberger

No 12733, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We provide the first field experimental evidence on how default options influence sustainable investment choices. Using a real-world investment setting that avoids experimenter demand effects and enables realistic estimates of effect sizes, we find that setting a sustainable investment as the default increases adoption from 23% to 36% relative to a conventional default. The effect is stable over time, consistent across investor subgroups, and persists in the long run. A follow-up survey shows that both sustainable and conventional investors expect their chosen portfolios to outperform, yet few are willing to sacrifice meaningful returns for sustainability. Overall, while sustainability preferences matter, investors' decisions remain primarily driven by financial return considerations under realistic market conditions.

Keywords: sustainable investing; field experiment; defaults; robo-advisor; ESG (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 G11 G41 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12733

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