Sustainable Finance Literacy and Sustainable Investment Behavior

We will increase the Sustainable Finance Literacy of our treatment group by providing a brochure that explains important ESG-related information within the regulatory environment of the EU.

2023-04-25

2023-07-31

Sustainable Investment Behaviour

We measure sustainable investment behavior using two different approaches. First, we give participants four choices between three funds per choice and measure in which funds they invest. One or two funds are sustainable, while the other(s) is/are not. Second, we ask our participants which criteria from a semi-closed list consisting of 9 fixed items they have used for their decision, with the option to add additional criteria. One criterion is sustainability.

Survey experiment; the treatment group is provided with an informational brochure, while the control group is not.

In general: See the enclosed Analysis plan which provides an outline of our experiment.

We run a survey experiment where the treatment group is provided with an informational brochure, while the control group is not. We conduct this experiment with students and on Prolific, and possibly with the customers of a German bank or a fintech company. At the time of this preregistration, the participation of these additional organizations in our experiment has not been confirmed yet, but we needed to start on April 25th with our student sample, which is why we preregistered at this time.
On Prolific and the possible customer sample, the experiment will only have one stage. We will begin with the experimental manipulation. We will then continue with the financial decisions and finally ask the questions required to gain data for the control variables. On Prolific, we additionally apply the de Qidt et al (2018 AER) method to control for experimenter demand effects. This means that we split the treatment group into three groups. In each treatment group, we will show the brochure. In the "no demand" group, we will not communicate any expectations. In the "negative demand" treatment, we will inform participants directly before the four decisions that we expect less sustainable investments than they normally would. In the "positive demand" treatment, we will inform participants directly before the four decisions that we expect more sustainable investments than they normally would. We will use these three treatments for bounding the real effect of the brochure.
For the student sample, we will utilize a two-time point experimental design. On the first date, we will randomly assign our participants to the two conditions, measure all control variables, and assess sustainable finance literacy. We will conduct this first wave on April 25th 2023. On the second date, May 23rd, we will collect data on our participants' financial decisions, and measure sustainable finance literacy again. This time delay allows us to test whether the effect of increased sustainable finance literacy persists over at least one month. We do not use this paradigm on the other samples as we anticipate sample attrition problems.

Computer

Individual

No

- One class of students
- Prolific
- Potentially customers of three different banks and one fintech company

1150+

- As many students as possible (we aim for around 150; as of now 237 students have applied to the online platform of the lecture in which we collect the data, but of course we do not know how many will actually appear and participate on both dates, so 150 is a rough estimate)
- 1000 participants on prolific, with an expected value of 250 in each treatment (before randomization)
- an unknown number of customers of three different banks and one fintech company