A critical evaluation of attitudes towards sustainable investment with a focus on pension funds – a case study on the company Siemens AG
Abstract
This research project aims to examine the attitudes beneficiaries and pension
fund managers hold towards incorporating sustainability as a bigger factor into
their investment portfolios. The study does this by analysing the general attitudes
towards sustainability and the drivers of investment, to later investigate the
influence these drivers have on the investment behaviour. To achieve these aims,
the researcher identified five objectives: 1) to broadly examine the existing
literature on the topics of sustainability and attitudes towards investments, 2) to
evaluate the importance of pension funds and their investments, 3) to identify
key drivers of investment, both with private and institutional investors, 4) to
explore sustainable investments and develop a thorough understanding of the
topic and 5) to determine the way beneficiaries and pension fund managers
perceive the importance of sustainability when it comes to investments. To fulfil
the above stated aims, the researcher chose to follow a sequential mixed method
approach to collect data. A questionnaire was used as the primary source of data
collection, followed by an e-mail interview with the manager of Siemens´
pension fund to attain higher confidence in the results. The findings drawn from
this research were surprising as most scholars in the field suggested that there are
differences in investment behaviours to be observed due to factors, such as age,
gender and education. However, the questionnaire showed no difference in
investment behaviours between genders, age groups or educational level. As
these results were unexpected the interview was important to validate the
findings. The pension fund manager agrees with the findings from the
quantitative part of the research and confirms everyone is looking for returns.
The study concludes on recommendations for future research to follow this one.