Morgan Stanley: 84% of Millennial investors interested in sustainable investing
In order to investigate investors’ attitudes towards sustainable investing (investing in companies or funds striving to achieve a positive social and/or environmental impact), identifying trends and expectations, the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing surveyed 800 individual investors, including 200 Millennials (18- to 32-year-olds).
Key findings include:
- 71% of the individual investors surveyed were interested in sustainable investing and 65% thought sustainable investing would become more widespread in the next five years
- 84% of Millennial investors were interested in sustainable investing. More specifically, Millennial investors were:
- almost twice more likely, compared to the rest, to invest in companies or funds striving to achieve specific social and/or environmental results
- almost twice as likely to invest in companies or funds that used their environmental, social or governance practices to gain a competitive advantage
- more than twice as likely to not invest in a company because of offensive business activities
- As workers and consumers, Millennial investors were:
- almost three times more likely (compared to the rest) to choose an employer because of the employer’s approach to social and/or environmental issues
- almost twice as likely to purchase a product based on a company’s social and/or environmental impact and check a product’s packaging using sustainability criteria
- Female investors were more interested in sustainable investing compared to male investors, were almost twice as likely to take into consideration both rate of return and a positive impact when making their investment decisions and were, also, more likely to think about sustainability in their decision making as consumers
- 45% of individual investors saw companies that integrated sustainability into their business practices as more innovative, 30% thought they attracted better talent and 72% believed such companies were capable of becoming more profitable and were better long-term investment choices
References:
This article was compiled using a paper published by the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing. For the sake of readability, we did not use brackets or ellipses but made sure that the extra or missing words did not change the paper’s meaning. If you would like to quote these written sources from the original please revert to the link below:
https://www.morganstanley.com/sustainableinvesting/pdf/Sustainable_Signals.pdf