{"title":"The moral preferences of investors: Experimental evidence","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.jfineco.2024.103955","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We characterize investors’ moral preferences in a parsimonious experimental setting, where we auction stocks with various ethical features. We find strong evidence that investors seek to align their investments with their social values (“value alignment”), and find no evidence of behavior driven by the social impact of investment decisions (“impact-seeking preferences”). First, the willingness to pay (WTP) for a stock is an increasing and quasi-linear function of corporate externalities. Second, this WTP does not change when corporate externalities are made contingent on investors buying the auctioned stock. Our results are thus compatible with a utility-maximization model where non-pecuniary benefits of firms’ externalities only accrue through stock ownership, not through the actual impact of investment decisions. Finally, the ability to directly contribute to the externality (by donating) does not reduce the willingness to pay for virtuous stocks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51346,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":10.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Financial Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X24001788","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS, FINANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We characterize investors’ moral preferences in a parsimonious experimental setting, where we auction stocks with various ethical features. We find strong evidence that investors seek to align their investments with their social values (“value alignment”), and find no evidence of behavior driven by the social impact of investment decisions (“impact-seeking preferences”). First, the willingness to pay (WTP) for a stock is an increasing and quasi-linear function of corporate externalities. Second, this WTP does not change when corporate externalities are made contingent on investors buying the auctioned stock. Our results are thus compatible with a utility-maximization model where non-pecuniary benefits of firms’ externalities only accrue through stock ownership, not through the actual impact of investment decisions. Finally, the ability to directly contribute to the externality (by donating) does not reduce the willingness to pay for virtuous stocks.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Financial Economics provides a specialized forum for the publication of research in the area of financial economics and the theory of the firm, placing primary emphasis on the highest quality analytical, empirical, and clinical contributions in the following major areas: capital markets, financial institutions, corporate finance, corporate governance, and the economics of organizations.