Do environmental social controls matter to Australian capital investment decision-making?

This paper looks at how environmental social controls (ESCs), namely mandatory disclosure, regulation, subsidies and stakeholder opinion, are perceived in terms of their relative importance by Australian capital investment managers. We find that regulation and stakeholder opinion are the most important ESCs. Subsidies generally have less influence, while mandatory disclosure has almost no impact on capital investment decisions. However, even the more important ESCs have much less than impact than mainstream financial and strategic factors. Policy makers seeking to influence capital investment managers will have to increase the power levels of the various ESCs if they are to change behaviour.