The Readiness for ESG among Retail Investors in Central and Eastern Europe. The Example of Poland

Abstract

Despite a considerable volume of literature on the environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investments, most studies have focused on the perspective of managers and investors in markets with developed ethical funds. This study complements previous studies by exploring the retail investors’ attitude toward ESG in Poland as a Central and Eastern European country (CEE) with a minor but developing sustainable investment market. While EU ESG regulations focus mostly on disclosure obligations, this study aims to determine whether retail investors in Poland are interested in ESG and identifies the conditions for the investors’ interest. The binomial logistic regression is applied to retail investors based on data from a survey of a representative sample of the Polish population. The results show that Poles consider human-caused climate changes as an important challenge and most of those willing to invest in the capital market want to do so in a sustainable way. However, they are unwilling to sacrifice their profits for the sake of ESG. Only those investors who make investment decisions based on social aspects are more likely to forgo a part of their profits. Women are more willing to engage in responsible investments and forgo higher profits.