Impact Investing: destined for being neglected?

Type and Duration

Coordinator

Main Research

Field of Research

Description

This research project sheds light to impact investing instruments. Impact investing is a rapidly increasing sustainable investment strategy, investing into companies, organizations and funds with the intention to reach environmental and social impact alongside a financial return. Today, a vast majority of sustainable assets under management are attracted by strategies using ESG-integration or screening methods. These instruments do not fundamentally differ from traditional asset management, as they use traditional securities, exclude some or increase the weight of those securities with a high ESG-score. In contrary, impact investing is much more linked to a sustainable, social and environmental use of invested funds, but this instrument possesses only a relatively low amount of assets under management.
On the other hand, we cannot recognize any shift towards more sustainable business practices worldwide. Goal of this research project is the examination if impact investing could be improved such that it attracts a substantially higher amount of assets under management and increases the speed of transformation to a more sustainable world.

Consequently, the research proposal at hand examines two research question. First, we have to develop a sound knowledge base on impact investing and how it is different compared to other sustainable investment strategies like ESG-integration or screening techniques. Research concerning this part requires a literature analysis, case studies and expert interviews. A deduction finally will lead us to propositions how to make impact investing more attractive.
The second research question of this project is analyzing investors' preferences. Only with a knowledge on investors' decision making process we will be able to propose smart impact investing instruments, which will then be chosen for their investments. Research concerning this part will be executed with a choice based conjoint analysis.

Project results:

Keywords

Improving Impact Investing, Investors' Preferences in Sustainable Investing, Sustainable Investing, ESG Investing, Socially Responsible Investing Instruments

Principal Investigator

Prof. em. Dr. Marco J. Menichetti

Project Collaborator

Dr. Hendrik Peer Kimmerle

Sponsor

• Forschungsförderungsfonds der Universität Liechtenstein