Beyond the wealth maximization: The impact of personal concerns with corporate social responsibility on individual investor behavior

The study aims at improving the comprehension of the personal motivations underlying the preference for ethical and socially responsible investments. In particular, referring to several principles of the “ethical finance”, the paper focuses on the extra-financial factors that mayimpact on the decision making of an individual investor. More specifically, the study assumes the wealth maximization as a not sufficient motivation for justifying why some people prefer an ethical and socially responsible investment instead of a conventional one inspired only to strictly financial criteria. In this sense, the paper considers the personal concern towards the CorporateSocial Responsibility (CSR) as a predictor of ethical and socially responsible investing. The resultsof the experimental survey conducted on a panel of 240 potential investors confirm our hypothesis. In fact, through the construction of a measure of the individual interest in CSR, the univariate and multivariate analysis of the answers given by the participants to the survey show how the level of personal concern towards the CSR is significantly related with the decision to shift the capital allocation from a conventional to a socially responsible investment.