Paetzold, Busch, and Chesney (2015)

Paetzold, Falko, Timo Busch, and Marc Chesney.  “More Than Money: Exploring The Role Of Investment Advisors For Sustainable Investing.”  Working paper (University of Zurich), 2015.

From the authors' abstract:  "Investment advisors play a central role in the decision making of investors, yet the determinants of their behavior have not been explored in detail. Based on a survey of 296 investment advisors, this study explores the determinants of how actively advisors communicate about sustainable investing with their clients, and differences in the preferences of advisors compared to investors. We confirm that the expected financial performance of sustainable investments relates strongly to the advisor’s behavior...  [W]e propose that ethical salespeople may be a myth, and a potential reason for the limited success of sustainability-related products. We also find that the expected impact of investment decisions in the real world relates strongly to advisor behavior. This points to the reporting of impact and the approach of impact investing as potential catalysts of sustainable investment."

Link (published version):  https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/ASR-12-2014-0002