Contact: Dr. Alan Lewis
Tel. (01225) 826826
Fax. (01225) 826752
EMail a.lewis@bath.ac.uk
There has been a spectacular growth in ethical and green investments in recent years, whereby investors choose to avoid investing in companies with poor pollution and industrial relations records, or in companies which gain profit from oppressive regimes or from the sale of armaments. It is as yet unclear whether there is a change taking place in the way people use their financial and purchasing power to express their ideals. If such a shift is occurring, the possibility that the world may become a better place through individual market choice without the need for government intervention is opened up. There are also strong implications for economic theory, which has traditionally assumed that financial behaviour is primarily motivated by individual interest.
The research will use a sample survey to compare the beliefs, values and attitudes of ordinary investors to those who favour ethical and green investments. This survey will seek to establish whether ethical investors share distinctive beliefs or whether they are close to ordinary investors in their values. The project will also carry out interviews with the managers, backers and advisers to the funds. Finally, it will conduct a series of experiments using computer simulations to examine the mix of ethical and other investments with different rates of return that potential investors would include in their portfolios under varying market conditions.
The work will be of practical use to the financial services industry and also to those concerned with the management of ethical investment. It will also contribute to our understanding of economic behaviour in general, and in particular of the role played by moral values in financial decision-making. More generally, it will indicate whether an important shift in the way people think about economic choices is taking place.
ALAN LEWIS is Reader in Economic Psychology and Director of the Centre of Economic Psychology at the University of Bath. He is author of numerous studies of economic behaviour, including co-authorship of The Economic Mind, (with A. Furnham, Wheatsheaf, 1986).
ADRIAN WINNETT is Lecturer in Economics at the University of Bath and has published on the question of ethical investment.
PAUL WEBLEY is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Exeter and has written extensively on economic behaviour, including co-authorship of The Individual in the Economy, (with S. Lea and R. Tarpy, Cambridge University Press, 1988).
OTHER RESEARCHERS:
Craig MacKenzie, Research Officer, University of Bath.
Go to the Morals and Money Web page.
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