Investor Valuation for Socially Responsible Assets: A Willingness to Pay Experiment

We present an experimental study of investors’ willingness to pay for socially responsible assets. In our initial public offering experiment, various assets share identical financial risk-return profiles but differ in the intensity and timing of societal benefits, represented by charitable donations. We find that subjects value societal benefits positively and prefer a positive correlation between financial returns and these societal benefits. We offer implications for the design of corporate social responsibility policies and for the pricing of responsible assets. This paper was accepted by David Sraer, finance. Funding: This work was supported by the Research Chair on Sustainable Finance at Toulouse School of Economics. S. Pouget gratefully acknowledges the Agence Nationale de la Recherche [Grant ANR-17-EURE-0010], the Research Initiative Finance Durable et Investissement Responsable, and Netspar for financial support. Supplemental Material: The online appendices and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.01349 .