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The purpose of this study is to segment and profile socially responsible investment (SRI) funds based on investment strategies they use. Specifically, the paper investigates how different SRI strategies are applied and how they are related to fund-level characteristics, with the goal of recognising their potential dominant combinations in SRI practice.

Cluster analysis was complemented with one-way ANOVA to classify 147 SRI funds from 11 European countries into different groups based on the diversification (number and type) and application (intensity of usage) of the investment strategies. Discriminant analysis and chi-square tests were conducted to profile the clusters. Financial performance was examined by running multiple hierarchical regression and dominance analyses to determine meaningfulness of particular investment strategies within each of the SRI fund clusters.

Three basic SRI fund clusters were recognised: strong-intensity strategic heterogeneity, weak-intensity strategic heterogeneity and weak-intensity strategic homogeneity. The combination of SRI strategies used in the weak-intensity strategic homogeneity cluster significantly explained the variance in mid-term financial returns.

Fund managers may use these results to make more informed investment decisions on the selection and the application of SRI strategies.

Financial industry has significant and broad and not only economic but also social implications. This research effort results in better understanding of the SRI universe, potentially leading to a broader consideration of the societal impact of financial investment.

The author provided useful insights into existing bundles of SRI strategies used in the European SRI market, recognised dominant investment strategies within SRI strategy portfolios and reported how strategic variety is related to fund-level characteristics.

The aim of this chapter is to propose a critical analysis of socially responsible investing (SRI) through debate and reconstruction. Our goal is therefore to try to understand how the definition of ethics in finance has steered SRI towards a financial approach where ethics is guided by finance.

This chapter proposes a two-point approach consisting of a meta-debate and development perspectives. Each approach is divided into three debates (ideological and philosophical, scientific and practical), which are interconnected.

The chapter concludes that the debate on mainstream SRI is necessary but should be re-discussed, as it is preventing in its current form the concept from developing and being grounded in real ethical values, sacrificing the individual ethics that should be driving investing decisions.

The chapter proposes to rethink the paradigm around SRI through a conceptual framework that re-inserts finance within ethics, where non-financial performance and impact investment should be at the centre of the scientific debates, leading to an SRI based on exclusion, the consideration of controversies and social impact measurement.

Socially responsible investment (SRI) is now a well established part of equities investment. Questions are now being raised over property investment and whether similar attempts to be “socially responsible” should be incorporated into investment practice. This paper aims to examine the investment practices of large fund managers for both equities and property in order to identify products and activities which are contributing to the progress of SRPI.

Analysis was conducted of equities SRI, and potential SRPI activities, for the top ten UK property fund management using publicly available company literature. This was analysed using simple matrices to understand common activities, industry application, and market‐leading innovations. Relationships between progress in SRI and SRPI, are also explored, along with the consideration of SRPI actions in the context of SRI concepts.

Market leaders were established in terms of their equities SRI products and services, though this did not necessarily equate to progress in the field of SRPI. Only one potentially SPRI product was identified. However this does not represent the overall consideration of sustainability issues in relation to property investment practices. Half of the companies studied were found to be taking actions which demonstrate attempts to consider the impacts associated with property investment.

This paper reflects a call from key SRPI thinkers to assess the current extent of SRPI practices, which will be a useful starting point for further analysis/debate of the most appropriate SRPI methods. It should therefore be of interest to both SRI and general property investors alike.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the existing literature on sustainable investments and propose an integrated conceptual framework for measuring socially responsible investment intention of investors.

Based on the theory of planned behaviour, the study discusses an integrated conceptual framework by thoroughly analysing the empirical studies of last 18 years, from 2001 to 2018. Some of the important measures of these studies have been reviewed, such as country of study, research methodology applied, sample size and respondents selected, model/theory applied, variables selected and significant findings of the study.

The study posits that collectivism, knowledge about sustainable investment, pro-environmental attitude and perceived risk will have a positive impact on attitude (ATT) towards SRI. Moreover, attitude (ATT) and subjective norms (SN) will be positively related to intention (INT) along with the mediating effect of social investing efficacy (SIE) and moderating effects of religiosity beliefs.

Besides implications for financial managers, various government bodies, prospective investors and other stakeholders, the study will provide impetus to companies for designing more sustainable funds that can promulgate the values and beliefs of investors.

The study incrementally contributes to the literature by way of suggesting a conceptual framework that can be empirically tested by future researchers.

This study aims to understand how media content and media sentiment in corporate social responsibility (CSR) news coverage affect investment performance, as reflected in the S&P 500 Environmental and Socially Responsible Index from 2010 to 2016.

Computer-assisted content analysis and sentiment analysis are employed to analyze 818 CSR-related newspaper articles from mainstream newspapers. Autoregressive model is used to comprehend socially responsible investment (SRI) performance.

This study reveals the impact of media content and media sentiment of CSR-related news articles on SRI. The authors’ findings indicate that such topics as recognition of a company's CSR contributions in CSR-related news articles are positively associated with SRI performance, whereas topics such as tax avoidance and environmental protection show a negative relationship with SRI performance. In addition, this study contributes to the authors’ understanding of framing bias in investment by confirming a significant positive association between an uncertain or constraining media sentiment and SRI performance, as well as a negative relationship between a litigious sentiment and SRI performance.

There has been limited attention to examining the effect of media coverage of CSR on the financial market. Since SRI is one of the most useful financial indices for SRIs, it is meaningful to explore the relationship between media coverage of CSR and SRI. To fill the research gap, this study specifically examines how media coverage of CSR-related issues is associated with SRI performance.

Purpose – These last three years, the global reputation of microfinance has been damaged by some major crises, notably in India. The Microfinance Investment Vehicles (MIVs), funded by public money and socially inclined investors, are believed by observers to be part of the causes of the crises (von Stauffenberg & Rozas, 2011). As a consequence, they now have to demonstrate their commitment to the social mission of microfinance. This chapter aims at putting forward the debate on MIVs’ ability to effectively contribute to the social mission of microfinance by analyzing how they integrate social performance in their investment decisions.

Methodology/approach – Analysis of interviews with microfinance fund managers based on a framework of recognized impediments to a socially responsible approach in investing.

Findings – While social performance is recognized by respondents to be an important topic for the industry, fund managers still do not give a strong role to social criteria in investment decisions. The findings of the qualitative analysis in the chapter demonstrate that this is linked to a number of major impediments such as the tendency to believe that microfinance is social per se, the lack of standardization in social performance tools, and also a loose regulation regarding social reporting.

Research limitations/implications – The findings of the study are limited due to the relatively small sample size and the focus on fund managers’ answers only. Future research could investigate the viewpoints of different stakeholders in the investment process, such as the back investors of microfinance funds or the regulatory institutions.

Originality/value – To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to get insights on the impediments to a stronger focus on social performance by MIVs, with the application of a recognized framework from the Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) literature.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues have recently received much attention. This research investigates the daily performance of socially responsible investment (SRI). To do that, the authors construct portfolios consisting of the SRI, non-SRI, and matched non-SRI. The portfolios can be compared with the market benchmark based on α adjusted asset pricing models. Due to using high-frequency data, the authors use ARCH/GARCH to deal with time-varying volatility. Moreover, the authors also utilized Fama–MacBeth pooled regression to confront the SRI stocks and the non-SRI counterpart. In sum, the findings of this study confirm the superior performance of the value-weighted (VW) SRI portfolio against the market. On a head-to-head basis, the SRI yields a higher return than the non-SRI. The results are robust in the quarterly analysis. It is essential for investors that put their money in socially responsible (SR) portfolios to either promote sustainable development or chase a return on it.

Employees often expect an emphasis on financial aspects to be predominant when their employers choose a fund management company for the investment of employees’ pension fund deposits. By contrast, in an attempt to appear as socially responsible company managers may emphasize social responsibility (SR) in pension fund choices. The purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent managers for small- and medium-sized companies emphasize SR vs expected returns when choosing investment managers for their employees’ pension funds.

A conjoint experiment among 276 Norwegian SMEs’ decision makers examines their trade-offs between social and financial goals in their choice of employees’ pension management. Furthermore, the study examines how the companies’ decision makers’ characteristics influence their pension fund management choices.

The findings show that the employers placed the greatest weight to suppliers providing funds adhering to socially responsible investment (SRI) practices, followed by the suppliers’ corporate brand credibility, the funds’ expected return, and the suppliers’ management fees. Second, employers with investment expertise emphasized expected returns and downplayed SR in their choice, whereas employers with stated CSR-strategies downplayed expected return and emphasized SR.

Choice of supplier to manage employees’ pension funds relates to a general discussion on whether companies should do well – maximizing value, or do good, – maximizing corporate SR. In this study, doing well means maximizing expected returns and minimizing costs of the pension investments, whereas doing good means emphasizing SRI in this choice. Unfortunately, the employees might pay a price for their companies’ ethicality as moral considerations may conflict with maximizing the employees’ pension fund value.

Much of the management research on socially responsible investment (SRI) consists in demonstrating how SRI is good for business and good for society. But the belief that business and market-based strategies will bring positive social and ecological change is far from natural and results in disputes. This study shows how SRI proponents have to develop and combine arguments in order to construct and defend a valid and plausible discourse on SRI that could resist the critiques and appease the disputes resulting from its institutionalization.

We collect articles in the media to identify the SRI controversies. For these disputes, we look at the attempts of SRI to give a robust justification of the particular arrangement it promotes, vis-à-vis a public audience, and we discuss possible resolutions.

SRI focuses on appealing to conventional finance with a market logic, resulting in very few challenges of the legitimacy of the existing institutional order. In a few cases, SRI seeks a resolution based on a competing principles resulting in hybrid constructions of compromises, which could be consolidated by SRI models and tools.

The results contribute to a better understanding of SRI as it is perceived today, and of how the disputes around its mainstreaming may unfold in the future. This helps us clarify our expectations towards SRI and shows that if we want to address shortcomings in finance, we should probably not rely on SRI as it is defined and practiced in the 21st century.

The present study attempts to analyze if personal values, namely collectivism, materialism and environment attitude, have an impact on attitude to invest in socially responsible investments (SRIs). Second, it examines the impact of attitude on SRI intention which may further be moderated by religiosity beliefs. Third, the moderated relation is further tested separately for two groups of gender.

The study uses cross-sectional data collected from 534 north Indian retail investors. PLS–SEM has been applied in this study using the latest version of SmartPLS (v. 3.2.9) software to examine the complex model of moderation analysis.

The results of PLS–SEM suggested that collectivism, materialism and environment attitude significantly influenced attitude which further led to SRI intention. The moderating role of religiosity was found to be significant on the attitude–intention relationship. Further, a significantly higher moderation of religiosity was found in females as compared to males.

Besides collectivism, materialism and environmental attitude, there could be other facets of an investor's personality that were not considered in the study. The present research was conducted in India, and Hofstede (1980) calls Indian culture to be collectivistic in nature, where the influence of pro-social and environmental concern on SRI intention is bound to be high; thus, findings need to be tested further at the global level.

Companies and financial institutions can enlarge their investor base for socially responsible products by propagating tailor-made financial products that can keep the personal values of investors intact in addition to providing satisfactory financial returns. Female investors can be encouraged to invest in SRI by promulgating the aspects of morality and ethics in their marketing and promotion strategies; eventually, this will lead to an upsurge in the proportion of female investors in financial markets.

The present study contributes to the growing body of research in the area of sustainable investments. This research has contributed to building and testing a moderation analysis of attitude–intention relationship with respect to SRI by adding investor's religiosity beliefs and his/her gender as moderating variables to better comprehend the relationships under study.