On January 13, 2016 the consumer organization of North Rhine-Westphalia (VZ NRW) presented survey results on the subject of “Sustainable financial investment”. For this purpose, the opinion research institute Forsa conducted telephone interviews with 1.003 consumers in NRW, who have already made one or more investments in addition to having a regular current account.
These are the most important results:
- More than half of the respondents were familiar with sustainable financial investments that consider ethical, social or ecological criteria, and 24% have at least once made such an investment.
- 53% of respondents favor renewable energies and energy efficiency as potential investment goals
- From those without any previous experience, 76% would dedicate at least a share of their available capital to sustainable investments and every seventh respondent would even invest more than half of it
- Regarding sustainable investments, a great majority of people associates risky shareholdings in wind turbines or photovoltaic systems (73%) and would only invest in products with little or no risk at all (76%); in return, consumers would accept lower returns on their investment.
According to the VZ NRW these results point to a great willingness to invest in sustainable funds among consumers in NRW that is, however, up to now not met by sufficient offers in the market. At the federal level, these investments would amount to a three-digit amount of several billions, which would promote and advance renewable energies as well as energy efficiency in Germany.
More information and the report
Source: VZ NRW