IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/safewp/333926.html

Beliefs about the climate impact of green investing

Author

Listed:
  • Heeb, Florian
  • Kölbel, Julian
  • Weder, Camilla

Abstract

This paper surveys beliefs about the climate impact of green investing among academic experts and retail investors. Using the views of academic experts as a benchmark, we show that retail investors have overly optimistic climate impact beliefs. While most academic experts do not believe that a typical green fund has a meaningful climate impact, the vast majority of retail investors do. The median retail investor expects a e10,000 green investment to offset 10% of an average person's carbon footprint. By contrast, the median estimate among academic experts is 2%, with 0% being the most common estimate. Impact beliefs influence investment decisions: When informed of academic experts' views, retail investors reduce their climate impact beliefs and willingness to pay for the green fund. Qualitative statements suggest that retail investors' optimistic beliefs are driven by a neglect of financial-market transmission mechanisms.

Suggested Citation

  • Heeb, Florian & Kölbel, Julian & Weder, Camilla, 2025. "Beliefs about the climate impact of green investing," SAFE Working Paper Series 463, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:safewp:333926
    DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.5841424
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/333926/1/194595762X.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2139/ssrn.5841424?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stefano Giglio & Matteo Maggiori & Joachim Rillo & Johannes Stroebel & Stephen P. Utkus & Xiao Xu, 2025. "Investor Beliefs and Expectation Formation," NBER Working Papers 34446, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Rob Bauer & Katrin Gödker & Paul Smeets & Florian Zimmermann, 2024. "Mental Models in Financial Markets: How Do Experts Reason About the Pricing of Climate Change?," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2024_569, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    3. Hunt Allcott & Dmitry Taubinsky, 2015. "Evaluating Behaviorally Motivated Policy: Experimental Evidence from the Lightbulb Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(8), pages 2501-2538, August.
    4. Stefanie Stantcheva, 2023. "How to Run Surveys: A Guide to Creating Your Own Identifying Variation and Revealing the Invisible," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 15(1), pages 205-234, September.
    5. Heinkel, Robert & Kraus, Alan & Zechner, Josef, 2001. "The Effect of Green Investment on Corporate Behavior," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(4), pages 431-449, December.
    6. Andre, Peter & Schirmer, Philipp & Wohlfart, Johannes, 2023. "Mental models of the stock market," SAFE Working Paper Series 406, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    7. Martin Oehmke & Marcus M Opp, 2025. "A Theory of Socially Responsible Investment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 92(2), pages 1193-1225.
    8. Rob Bauer & Katrin Gödker & Paul Smeets & Florian Zimmermann, 2024. "Mental Models in Financial Markets: How Do Experts Reason about the Pricing of Climate Risk?," CESifo Working Paper Series 11149, CESifo.
    9. Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2023. "Designing Information Provision Experiments," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 3-40, March.
    10. Arno Riedl & Paul Smeets, 2017. "Why Do Investors Hold Socially Responsible Mutual Funds?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(6), pages 2505-2550, December.
    11. Florian Heeb & Julian F Kölbel & Falko Paetzold & Stefan Zeisberger, 2023. "Do Investors Care about Impact?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 36(5), pages 1737-1787.
    12. Berk, Jonathan B. & van Binsbergen, Jules H., 2025. "The impact of impact investing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    13. Peter Andrebriq & Carlo Pizzinelli & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2022. "Subjective Models of the Macroeconomy: Evidence From Experts and Representative Samples," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 89(6), pages 2958-2991.
    14. Bonnefon, Jean-François & Landier, Augustin & Sastry, Parinitha & Thesmar, David, 2025. "The moral preferences of investors: Experimental evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    15. Augustin Landier & Stefano Lovo, 2025. "Socially Responsible Finance: How to Optimize Impact," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 38(4), pages 1211-1258.
    16. Gong Cheng & Eric Jondeau & Benoit Mojon & Dimitri Vayanos, 2023. "The impact of green investors on stock prices," BIS Working Papers 1127, Bank for International Settlements.
    17. Pedersen, Lasse Heje & Fitzgibbons, Shaun & Pomorski, Lukasz, 2021. "Responsible investing: The ESG-efficient frontier," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 572-597.
    18. Pástor, Ľuboš & Stambaugh, Robert F. & Taylor, Lucian A., 2021. "Sustainable investing in equilibrium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 550-571.
    19. Dyck, Alexander & Lins, Karl V. & Roth, Lukas & Wagner, Hannes F., 2019. "Do institutional investors drive corporate social responsibility? International evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(3), pages 693-714.
    20. Daniel Green & Benjamin N. Roth, 2025. "The Allocation of Socially Responsible Capital," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 80(2), pages 755-781, April.
    21. Giglio, Stefano & Maggiori, Matteo & Stroebel, Johannes & Tan, Zhenhao & Utkus, Stephen & Xu, Xiao, 2025. "Four facts about ESG beliefs and investor portfolios," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    22. Tiziano De Angelis & Peter Tankov & Olivier David Zerbib, 2023. "Climate Impact Investing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(12), pages 7669-7692, December.
    23. Marco Ceccarelli & Stefano Ramelli, 2024. "Climate Transition Beliefs," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 24-22, Swiss Finance Institute.
    24. Jonathan de Quidt & Johannes Haushofer & Christopher Roth, 2018. "Measuring and Bounding Experimenter Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(11), pages 3266-3302, November.
    25. Andreas G F Hoepner & Ioannis Oikonomou & Zacharias Sautner & Laura T Starks & Xiao Y Zhou, 2024. "ESG shareholder engagement and downside risk," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 28(2), pages 483-510.
    26. Jeffers, Jessica & Lyu, Tianshu & Posenau, Kelly, 2024. "The risk and return of impact investing funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dangl, Thomas & Halling, Michael & Yu, Jin & Zechner, Josef, 2025. "Social preferences and corporate investment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    2. Cartellier, Fanny & Tankov, Peter & Zerbib, Olivier David, 2025. "Can investors curb greenwashing?," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    3. Heeb, Florian & Kölbel, Julian & Ramelli, Stefano & Vasileva, Anna, 2024. "Green investing and political behavior," SAFE Working Paper Series 438, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    4. Draganac, Dragana & Lu, Kelin, 2025. "Pricing asset beyond financial fundamentals: The impact of prosocial preference and image concerns," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    5. Li, Suyang & Qiao, Lu & Ren, Boru & Wang, Zilong, 2025. "Financing sustainability: Sustainable institutional investors and bank loan access," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    6. Berg, Florian & Ceccarelli, Marco & Heeb, Florian & Ivashchenko, Alexey & Rigobón, Roberto & Zwinkels, Remco C. J., 2025. "The market for voluntary carbon offsets," SAFE Working Paper Series 462, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    7. Li, Qianqian & Watts, Edward M. & Zhu, Christina, 2024. "Retail investors and ESG news," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2).
    8. Ali Hassan & Jean-Baptiste Hasse & Christelle Lecourt, 2025. "Is Impact Investor Behavior Different ?," AMSE Working Papers 2521, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    9. Roman Kräussl & Tobi Oladiran & Denitsa Stefanova, 2024. "A review on ESG investing: Investors’ expectations, beliefs and perceptions," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 476-502, April.
    10. Bucher-Koenen, Tabea & Herforth, Anna-Lena & Kirschenmann, Karolin & Ravanbakhshhabibabadi, Monireh, 2025. "Financing the green transition: The role of private capital," ZEW policy briefs 04/2025, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    11. Ferreira, Daniel & Nikolowa, Radoslawa, 2025. "Polarization, purpose and profit," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 128848, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Ferreira, Daniel & Nikolowa, Radoslawa, 2025. "Polarization, purpose and profit," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    13. Giglio, Stefano & Maggiori, Matteo & Stroebel, Johannes & Tan, Zhenhao & Utkus, Stephen & Xu, Xiao, 2025. "Four facts about ESG beliefs and investor portfolios," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    14. Elisa Bocchialini & Demetrio Miloslavo Bova & Ilaria Colivicchi & Federica Ielasi, 2024. "Environmental-, Social-, and Governance-Oriented Pension Funds for Young Contributors: A Win–Win Option," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(24), pages 1-19, December.
    15. Kim, Sehoon & Kumar, Nitish & Lee, Jongsub & Oh, Junho, 2025. "ESG lending," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    16. Steven D. Baker & Burton Hollifield & Emilio Osambela, 2022. "Asset Prices and Portfolios with Externalities [Pricedetermination in the EU ETS market: theory and econometric analysis with market fundamentals]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(6), pages 1433-1468.
    17. Zwetelina Iliewa & Elisabeth Kempf & Oliver Spalt, 2025. "Corporate Actions as Moral Issues," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2025_649v2, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany, revised Apr 2025.
    18. Hakenes, Hendrik & Schliephake, Eva, 2022. "Responsible Investment and Responsible Consumption," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264004, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    19. Hendrik Hakenes & Eva Schliephake, 2021. "Responsible Investment and Responsible Consumption," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 134, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    20. Janz, Catharina & Rilke, Rainer Michael & Burcin Yurtoglu, B., 2025. "Does ESG information impact individual investors’ portfolio choices?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G41 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making in Financial Markets
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:safewp:333926. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csafede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.