Retail investors and ESG news

IF 0.4 Q4 ECONOMICS International Journal of Economics Management and Accounting Pub Date : 2024-07-19 DOI:10.1016/j.jacceco.2024.101719

Qianqian Li, Edward M. Watts, Christina Zhu

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Abstract

An important debate exists around the extent to which retail investors make sustainable investments and, if they do, why. We contribute to this debate by investigating the aggregate trading patterns of retail investors around a comprehensive sample of key environmental, social, and governance (ESG) news events for U.S. firms. We show that ESG news events appear to be an important factor in retail investors’ portfolio allocation decisions. Yet, inconsistent with arguments about retail investors’ nonpecuniary preferences, our evidence shows that retail investors mainly trade on this information when they deem it financially material to a company’s stock performance. We also find their net trading demand predicts abnormal returns in the subsample of financially material events, consistent with retail traders benefiting from incorporating ESG-related information into their decision-making when it influences firm value. Overall we conclude that the average U.S. retail investor cares about firms’ ESG activities but primarily to the extent these activities matter for company financial performance.

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散户投资者与 ESG 新闻

关于散户投资者在多大程度上进行可持续投资，以及如果他们进行可持续投资，原因是什么，存在着重要的争论。我们通过调查散户投资者围绕美国公司关键的环境、社会和治理（ESG）新闻事件综合样本的总体交易模式，为这一争论做出了贡献。我们发现，ESG 新闻事件似乎是影响散户投资者投资组合配置决策的一个重要因素。然而，与有关散户投资者非金钱偏好的论点不一致的是，我们的证据显示，散户投资者主要是在他们认为该信息对公司股票表现具有财务重要性时才进行交易。我们还发现，他们的净交易需求可以预测财务重大事件子样本中的异常回报，这与散户交易者在 ESG 相关信息影响公司价值时将其纳入决策中获益是一致的。总之，我们得出结论，美国的普通散户投资者关心公司的环境、社会和公司治理活动，但主要是在这些活动对公司财务业绩有影响的情况下。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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International Journal of Economics Management and Accounting ECONOMICS-

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