Exploring socially responsible investment perspectives: A literature mapping and an investor classification

Socially Responsible Investments (SRIs) have become increasingly popular over the past decade. The majority of the literature focuses on SRI performance (versus conventional investments), content and related evaluation-screening techniques. Even though numerous terms with differing focus have been coined (e.g. sustainable, environmental, ethical, and social investments) to describe the rationale for SRIs, they all pertain to one all-encompassing SRIs definition. This undermines the accuracy and robustness of current measurement techniques as only certain aspects of the overall SRIs performance are assessed. The purpose of this paper is threefold: Firstly, a mapping of SRIs terminology according to the focus areas is provided followed by a classification for Socially Responsible Investors based on underlying motivational factors. A narrative literature review has been conducted for SRIs relying on the triple-bottom-line approach. It concludes with a mapping of SRIs territory by outlining seven distinct SRI categories for investors' motivations and also offers a classification with ten types of SRIs. Thirdly, a discussion regarding the relationship between SRIs and cleaner production is presented. The finding shows that there is a dichotomy in the field of SRIs. Some types of investors move to SRIs mainly to exploit new financial opportunities or to avoid potential risks regarding the environmental and social aspects of sustainability while value-based investors are willing to invest money in firms and projects with an environmental, social and ethical orientation. (C) 2019 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.