Fund Loyalty Among Socially Responsible Investors: The Importance of the Economic and Ethical Domains

The corporate social responsibility literature has emphasized the importance of both economic and ethical domains of corporate behavior. Analyzing unprecedented survey data from investors in a socially responsible (SR) mutual fund, this article considers how economic and ethical concerns shape share...

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主要作者: Peifer, Jared L. (Author)
格式: 電子 Article
語言:English
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出版: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2014
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2014, 卷: 121, 發布: 4, Pages: 635-649
Further subjects:B Socially Responsible Investing
B Corporate social responsibility
B Ethical consumption
B customer loyalty
在線閱讀: Volltext (JSTOR)
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總結:The corporate social responsibility literature has emphasized the importance of both economic and ethical domains of corporate behavior. Analyzing unprecedented survey data from investors in a socially responsible (SR) mutual fund, this article considers how economic and ethical concerns shape shareholder investment behavior. In particular, this article analyzes levels of investor fund loyalty, defined as the continued investment in a mutual fund despite the belief that one is earning a lower return on investment. Building upon existing research that shows SR fund assets are more stable than conventional fund assets, this article leverages within respondent comparisons to clarify that dual investors (i.e., those who invest in both SR and conventional funds) are more loyal to their SR fund than to their conventional fund. This suggests that a corporation’s ethical behavior attracts more patient investment capital, an important consideration for any corporation that is deciding to what degree it should engage in corporate social responsibility. In addition, this article empirically demonstrates that economic motivations reduce SR fund loyalty and that ethical motivations induce SR fund loyalty. This evidence that ethical motivation is associated with fund loyalty advances research on morality in the market by yielding empirical evidence to a largely theoretical debate.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-013-1746-7