Cited by 552Sustainable Finance and Green BondsCorporate Social Responsibility ReportingFinancial Markets and Investment Strategies

Get Real! Individuals Prefer More Sustainable Investments

Open access
Bauer, Rob, Ruof, Tobias, Smeets, Paul·2021·The Review of Financial Studies

Abstract

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have created societal and political pressure for pension funds to address sustainable investing. We run two field surveys (n = 1,669, n = 3,186) with a pension fund that grants its members a real vote on its sustainable-investment policy. Two-thirds of participants are willing to expand the fund’s engagement with companies based on selected SDGs, even when they expect engagement to hurt financial performance. Support remains strong after the fund implements the choice. A key reason is participants’ strong social preferences.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/rfs/hhab037

Cites

117 of 117 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • There is broad consensus in the literature on the sustainability preferences of investors.

    “We find broad consensus in the literature on the sustainability preferences of investors (Bauer et al., 2021;Ceccarelli et al., 2023;Heeb et al., 2023, among others).”

    From A review on ESG investing: Investors' expectations, beliefs and perceptions (2024) · cites this paper as Bauer et al., 2021

  • There is strong empirical evidence in the literature that investors have a preference for ESG.

    “We find strong empirical evidence in the literature that investors have a preference for ESG”

    From A review on ESG investing: Investors' expectations, beliefs and perceptions (2024) · cites this paper as Bauer et al., 2021

  • Bauer et al. (2021) provide evidence that support for sustainable investments is driven by strong social preferences of investors rather than beliefs for better financial outcomes from investments in green assets.

    “Bauer et al. (2021) provide evidence that the support for sustainable investments is driven by strong social preferences of investors rather than beliefs for better financial outcomes from investments in green assets.”

    From A review on ESG investing: Investors' expectations, beliefs and perceptions (2024) · cites this paper as Bauer et al. (2021)

  • Individual investor's social preferences matter in delegated portfolio decisions.

    “They also show that individual investor's social preferences matter in delegated portfolio decisions.”

    From A review on ESG investing: Investors' expectations, beliefs and perceptions (2024) · cites this paper as Bauer et al. (2021)

  • The field surveys explored in Bauer et al. (2021) shed light on the willingness of pension fund investors to support engagement in sustainable actions in portfolio companies.

    “The field surveys explored in Bauer et al. (2021) shed light on the willingness of pension fund investors to support engagement in sustainable actions in portfolio companies.”

    From A review on ESG investing: Investors' expectations, beliefs and perceptions (2024) · cites this paper as Bauer et al., 2021

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

3 of the 120 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Cappelen, A. W., T. Halvorsen, E. Sørensen, and B. Tungodden. 2017. Facesaving or fair-minded: What motivates moral behavior? Journal of the European Economics Association 15:540-57.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Bauer, R., Ruof, T., & Smeets, P.
Affiliations
Maastricht University (NL)
Corresponding author
Smeets, Paul
Venue
The Review of Financial Studies
Published
2021-04-19
Volume
34
Issue
8
Pages
3976-4043
ISSN
  • 0893-9454 (ISSN-L)
  • 1465-7368
OpenAlex
W3155804760
Cited by
552
References
120
Citations by year
2026: 90 · 2025: 118 · 2024: 120 · 2023: 99 · 2022: 58 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 1
FWCI
64.67
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Review of Financial Studies (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • Research Publications (Maastricht University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
  • Research Publications (Maastricht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Funders
  • Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging and Retirement
  • Strong
  • Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (016.Veni.175.019, 016.Veni, 451-16-005)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Finance › Sustainable Finance and Green Bonds
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Finance › Financial Markets and Investment Strategies
Keywords
sustainable investment, pension funds, Sustainable Development Goals, shareholder engagement, social preferences, individual preferences, ESG investing

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review