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This study analyses the role of individuals' objective financial knowledge in shaping preferences for ethical intermediaries and sustainable investments in Italy. Another goal of this study is to assess the impact of individuals' misperceptions about their own financial knowledge and to test for gender-related differences in attitudes towards socially responsible investing (SRI).

Using nationally representative microdata from the Bank of Italy’s “Italian Literacy and Financial Competence Survey” (IACOFI), the authors use probit models, extended to account for potential endogeneity issues, to assess the causal effects of financial knowledge and confidence on stated preferences for SRI. Empirical models also allow to explicitly assess the moderating role of gender on the effects of financial knowledge and confidence on attitudes towards sustainable investing.

Results indicate that individuals' preferences for sustainable finance significantly increase with financial knowledge, suggesting that inadequate financial competencies represent a barrier to participation in SRI. At the same time, lack of confidence in one’s own financial knowledge significantly hampers attitudes towards sustainable investments. Furthermore, the authors show that women have a greater preference for sustainable finance than men and point out that financial knowledge and confidence exert heterogenous effects on attitudes towards SRI.

This study provides several contributions to the literature on SRI. First, the authors give evidence of the causal effect of financial knowledge on preferences for both ethical financial intermediaries and sustainable investments. Moreover, this is the first study to investigate the role of financial underconfidence bias in shaping individuals' SRI attitudes. Finally, extending previous research, the authors assess differences in SRI preferences between women and men and provide novel evidence on gender-related heterogeneity in the effects of financial knowledge and underconfidence.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the applicability of Preference Similarity Theory (PST) and Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) in identifying the target audience and developing effective marketing strategies, particularly in non-Muslim countries, to increase the market growth and reach of sukuk to broader investor groups and provide recommendations for such strategies.

After separately examining the effects of PST and PMT on marketing sukuk, recommendations are presented from a shared perspective of these two theories.

The findings of this study suggest that understanding the values, beliefs and perceptions of potential investors is crucial for effectively marketing sukuk investments, especially in non-Muslim countries. The PST and PMT provide useful frameworks for tailoring sukuk offerings and communicating effectively about the risks and benefits of sukuk investments to attract investors who identify with the values and beliefs embodied in sukuk.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the marketing of sukuk in non-Muslim countries. This study is also the first paper to discuss sukuk in the context of PST and PMT. In addition, this study is expected to guide banks in the marketing of sukuk.

This study aims to examine the value orientations of New Zealand agribusiness investors and how these orientations influence their reactions to the environmental and social implications of agribusinesses.

In the context of the New Zealand agricultural sector, the views of investors as published in print and broadcast media between 2018 and 2022 are gathered. The study uses qualitative content analysis to analyse the data. The study is based on the value-belief-norm theory.

The study reveals that New Zealand agribusiness investors express concern about the environmental (biospheric) and social (altruistic) impacts of the agribusiness sector, prompting calls for greater transparency, climate adaptation and ethical investment options. Additionally, they actively support local businesses to benefit their communities and preserve cultural heritage. Despite these biospheric and altruistic tendencies, investors also prioritise financial and non-financial interests (egoistic). This highlights a nuanced perspective guiding their investment choices – a balance between self-interest and contributing to the greater good. This signals a shift towards socially and environmentally responsible investment practices driven by multifaceted values.

The findings of this study highlight the role of non-pecuniary motives, like values, in determining the relevance of environmental and social information.

The study’s findings offer insight to agribusinesses on how investors’ value orientations shape their investment decisions. This understanding can guide businesses in framing a reporting strategy that enhances the likelihood of investors perceiving reporting as relevant and persuasive, thereby attracting more investments. In turn, this tailored reporting approach assists investors in making well-informed decisions in assessing the environmental and societal risks of agribusinesses.

The study offers a framework explaining how agribusinesses can increase the likelihood of investors finding firms reporting relevant and persuasive, leading to increased investments in environmentally and socially sustainable practices.

We explore how sustainable management education (SME) can help prepare future leaders to manage crises effectively. Precisely, the intricacies of articulating moral and economic imperatives for businesses in a manner that engages students in sustainable behavior are a serious challenge for SME. We study how to integrate reminders of moral and economic imperatives in a socially responsible investment (SRI) stock-picking simulation created for SME.

Adopting an experimental design, we analyzed how the reminders affected the average environment social governance (ESG) integration in the portfolios of 127 graduate students in finance over a twelve-week period.

Our results show how essential it is to balance the two imperatives. The highest level of sustainable investment is attained when utilizing both reminders.

Our findings have practical implications for implementing and organizing SME in business schools to educate responsible leaders who are able to effectively manage crises. Learning responsible management is most effective when students are exposed to the inherent tension between moral and economic imperatives. Hence, our findings corroborate the win-win conception of SME.

No management decision study has experimentally measured the effects of SME practices on students' actual behavior. Our research fills this gap by complementing previous studies on the effectiveness of teaching practices, first by drawing on behavioral sciences and measuring changes in students' actual sustainability behavior and second by introducing moral and economic imperatives into an innovative teaching resource (TR) dedicated to SME.

This study aims to examine the herding behavior of socially responsible exchange traded funds (SR ETFs) in comparison to conventional ETFs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To test for herding behavior, the authors use the cross-sectional absolute deviation and a quadratic market model.

During the pandemic, investments in socially responsible financial products grew rapidly. And investors in the popular SR ETFs herd during this special period, while holders of conventional ETFs did not.

Investors in socially responsible investments must do their own research and make their own financial decisions, rather than follow the crowd, especially during extreme events like the COVID-19 pandemic.

The evidence shows that, during the pandemic, socially responsible ETFs behaved in line with theoretical predictions of herding, that is, herding is more significant during extreme market conditions.

This paper examines the effect of ESG ratings and its dimensions (environmental, social and governance) on the financial performance of JSE-listed firms included in FTSE/JSE Responsible Investment Index.

The paper employs panel data covering 40 JSE-listed firms included in FTSE/JSE Responsible Investment Index between 2015 and 2019. The paper employs the two-stage least squares (2SLS) instrumental variable regression technique to estimate the effect of ESG ratings and its dimensions (environmental, social and governance) on both accounting- and market-based performance indicators.

The results of the two-stage least squares instrumental estimation analysis reveal that investment in ESG initiatives improves both accounting- and market-based indicators of financial performance. Of the ESG pillars, the paper finds environmental initiatives improves firms' financial bottom line and market performance, while a firm's social and governance practices are observed to have no effect on a firm's accounting and market performance measures.

The insights from this study proffers policy implications for firms' management, investors and regulatory authorities.

As far as the authors are concerned, this paper presents the first empirical analysis on the contribution of ESG ratings on financial performance in South Africa.

Grounded in the stakeholder theory and signaling theory, this study aims to broaden the research agenda on environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing by uncovering public sentiments and key themes using Twitter data spanning from 2009 to 2022.

Using various machine learning models for text tonality analysis and topic modeling, this research scrutinizes 1,842,985 Twitter texts to extract prevalent ESG investing trends and gauge their sentiment.

Gibbs Sampling Dirichlet Multinomial Mixture emerges as the optimal topic modeling method, unveiling significant topics such as “Physical risk of climate change,” “Employee Health, Safety and well-being” and “Water management and Scarcity.” RoBERTa, an attention-based model, outperforms other machine learning models in sentiment analysis, revealing a predominantly positive shift in public sentiment toward ESG investing over the past five years.

This study establishes a framework for sentiment analysis and topic modeling on alternative data, offering a foundation for future research. Prospective studies can enhance insights by incorporating data from additional social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Leveraging unstructured data on ESG from platforms like Twitter provides a novel avenue to capture company-related information, supplementing traditional self-reported sustainability disclosures. This approach opens new possibilities for understanding a company’s ESG standing.

By shedding light on public perceptions of ESG investing, this research uncovers influential factors that often elude traditional corporate reporting. The findings empower both investors and the general public, aiding managers in refining ESG and management strategies.

This study marks a groundbreaking contribution to scholarly exploration, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, by being the first to analyze unstructured Twitter data in the context of ESG investing, offering unique insights and advancing the understanding of this emerging field.

The main objective of this paper is to analyze works of literature on SRI sukuk to highlight the potential for these kinds of instruments in financing more sustainable financial systems (SFSs). The analysis mainly accentuates a dearth of knowledge on the various challenges and opportunities in the realm of SRI.

This paper pioneers the bibliometric and systematic literature review of the development of the SRI sukuk from 2016 (the first available year in the field) to and 2021.

The study findings highlighted several pertinent SRI issues: the lack of standardization due to the different interpretations of Shariah and green, the lack of retail investors, which inevitably produce a lack of liquidity in the secondary market, thus limiting their growth, its funding allocation’ close resemblance to green financing, and the role of Malaysia and Indonesia as global sustainable financial hubs to stimulate the development of Shariah-compliant sustainable instruments and contribute to the international debate about the building of a global standardized framework related to sustainable investments.

The integration of the environmental principles of a green bond with the Shariah-compliant financial structure of a sukuk, the SRI sukuk, represents a vital crossroad in both sustainable and Islamic finance. Social-impact sukuk and green sukuk is an undervalued instrument that could play an important role in financing a more sustainable economic and financial system, including Islamic investing. This kind of instruments, which is based on a “pay for success” principle in the conventional layout, perfectly fit with the profit-and-lost sharing’s (PLS's) ethicality, the sustainability principles of Islamic finance and the religious principles of Islamic law.

This paper aims to market analysis on the base many factors. Market analysis must be done correctly to increase the efficiency of smart grid technologies. On the other hand, it is not very possible for the company to make improvements for too many factors. The main reason for this is that businesses have constraints both financially and in terms of manpower. Therefore, a priority analysis is needed in which the most important factors affecting the effectiveness of the market analysis will be determined.

In this context, a new fuzzy decision-making model is generated. In this hybrid model, there are mainly two different parts. First, the indicators are weighted with quantum spherical fuzzy multi SWARA (M-SWARA) methodology. On the other side, smart grid technology investment projects are examined by quantum spherical fuzzy ELECTRE. Additionally, facial expressions of the experts are also considered in this process.

The main contribution of the study is that a new methodology with the name of M-SWARA is generated by making improvements to the classical SWARA. The findings indicate that data-driven decisions play the most critical role in the effectiveness of market environment analysis for smart technology investments. To achieve success in this process, large-scale data sets need to be collected and analyzed. In this context, if the technology is strong, this process can be sustained quickly and effectively.

It is also identified that personalized energy schedule with smart meters is the most essential smart grid technology investment alternative. Smart meters provide data on energy consumption in real time.

The global energy sector draws significant stakeholder attention due to never-ending controversies surrounding its environmental impacts. Investors’ response to such controversies causes direct financial implications for these firms. Furthermore, environmental, social and governance (ESG) sensitivity, which is likely to safeguard the energy sector firms from such controversies, is itself conditional to the development stage of a country and its regulatory environment. Therefore, this study aims to investigate if the influence of ESG on the share price volatility (SPV) of energy sector firms is subject to the development stage of the countries.

The study investigates nine years of panel data of 93 global energy sector firms from developing and developed nations. Using dynamic two-way fixed effects estimation and computing robust standard errors to obtain the econometric results.

The main finding reveals that the impact of ESG on SPV is, indeed, subject to the development stage of the nations. Similar results are observed for the effects of the social dimension of ESG on SPV. While ESG impacts the SPV negatively for firms in developing economies, the impact is the opposite for firms in developed nations. In other words, strong ESG propositions induce share price stability for developing countries while destabilizing the firms in developed nations.

The policymakers should further streamline the regulations and policies related to ESG adoption and adherence. In practice, the energy sectors should streamline their operations. Firm managers, especially in the energy sector, should devise strategies with ESG as an essential component to safeguard their firms against environmental and market volatility and adversatives. The firms in developing nations should further strengthen their social dimension of ESG to foster social equity and harmony.

The study contributes through its niche investigations on the energy sector, which is very important for the world economy. The study is relevant in the current scenario when the world faces a severe energy crisis due to global supply chain issues.