Descriptive Statistics

All data was collected between the 17th March and the 2nd June 2015 via the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII).51 An invitation to participate in survey was distributed to 116,265 members through the association’s mailing list, of whom 5,515 investors started the survey, and 3,046 respondents completed it, yielding a response rate of 2.6%.52 I excluded all respondents who did not finish the entire survey and checked for double responses by comparing IP addresses. I excluded all responses that came from the same IP address; I only considered the first responses from the same IP address so as to ensure that respondents were not familiar with the measures. This left me with 3,055 complete responses. In all sections of the survey, apart from the socio-demographic section, I used the '"forced response" option of the survey provider "Qualtrics", meaning unless respondents answered all questions on each screen they were not able to proceed. I did not use this option for the survey section that collected respondents’ socio-demographic characteristics,

5151 _{The AAII is a non-profit association, with a mission to assist “individuals in becoming effective} managers of their own assets through programs of education, information and research” (AAII.com, 2016).

52 _{The response rate is slightly lower than those obtained in similar studies (Junkus and Berry 2010;} Berry and Junkus 2013).

which is why the number of the socio-demographic variables varies slightly. Table 2 present the descriptive statistics for all personality and control variables53_.

53 _{Table 2 does not show the descriptive statistics of the control variables for each of the different samples. Please}

Table 2 -Descriptive statistics - Personality and control variables

Variable

type Variable Name N Mean Std. Dev. Min Max

Socio- deomgraphic Age 1919 55.6 10.88 20 82 Female 1946 0.05 0.23 0 1 University degree 1941 0.87 0.32 0 1 Economics-course 1944 0.68 0.46 0 1

Total Portfolio 3,046 $ 2.35 mil. $ 3.17 mil. $ 1620 $ 21 mil.

Controls Risk-Preferences 2010 103.87 48.82 0 200 Numeracy 1944 2.58 1.1 1 4 SRI-Return 2864 2.28 0.75 1 5 SRI-Risk 2864 2.71 0.73 1 5 Big Five traits Openness 569 4.41 0.97 1 6.67 Conscientiousness 569 4.62 0.9 1.67 6.67 Extraversion 569 3.76 1.21 1 6.67 Agreeableness 569 4.58 0.92 1.33 6.67 Neuroticism 569 3.26 1.14 1 7 HEXACO traits Honest-Humility 156 3.43 0.42 2 4.3 Emotionality 156 2.89 0.51 1.6 4.4 Extraversion 156 3.25 0.48 1.3 4.4 Agreeableness 156 3.16 0.47 2.1 4.2 Conscientiousness 156 3.61 0.42 2.3 4.6 Openness 156 3.65 0.54 2.2 4.9 Empathy traits Empathic concern 532 2.53 0.61 0 4 Personal distress 532 1.18 0.67 0 3.29 Perspective taking 532 2.49 0.62 0.57 4 Fantasy 532 1.68 0.7 0 4 Dart triad traits Machiavellianism 520 2.7 0.54 1 4.67 Narcissism 520 2.69 0.43 1.44 4.11 Psychopathy 520 1.99 0.48 1 3.67

The sample is predominantly male (94.2%) with a mean age of 55.6. The respondents are generally very well educated - 87.9% (1,704) have a university degree - and also knowledgeable about economic theory; 68.7 % (1,333) have taken a formal economics course at university-level. Further, the investors are rather wealthy; the mean portfolio value across the sample is $ 2.35 million, corresponding closely to the mean portfolio value of members of the organisation - $ 2.43 million - reported to me by the AAII. The risk preference measure reports the switching point where an investor switches from the lottery to the 'sure' payout, the average investor switches at 103.87 dollars (S.D = 48.82) indicating that the average investor is risk averse (the

risk neutral point is 150 Dollar). The numeracy scores of the sample are very similar to those reported by Cokely et al. (2012) for a sample of students from different German Universities. Furthermore, investors in the sample believed that SRI yields lower returns (M= 2.29, SD = 0.75) relative to conventional investments, t(2,863) = - 51.23, p < 0.001.54 Investors also expected SRI to be slightly more risky (M= 2.70, SD = 0.73) than conventional investments, t(2,863) = -20.99, p < 0.001.55 To give th reader a completed overview of the data table B3 in the appendix shows the descriptive statistics for all control variables for all samples.

The scores of the personality traits are comparable to those obtained in adult samples in previous studies employing the same measures (Lang et al. 2011, for the BFI-S: Ashton and Lee 2009, for the HEXACO-60; Konrath et al. 2010, for the empathy measure (IRI); and Jones and Paulhus 2014, for the SD3).

Table 3 reports the descriptive statistics for the dependent measures for the entire sample, and for the samples for each personality measure. In this study I solely investigate the association of personality traits with the dependent variables SRI- Interest and SRI-Ever-Invested. However, for the reader’s consideration table 3 also reports results for another measure 'SRI-Proportion' that is the self-reported aggregate share of investors' portfolios invested in SRI assets. Only a small minority of the surveyed individual investors (324 respondents; 10.7% of the full sample) indicated that they currently held SRI investments and of these, only about half recollected the size of the assets in question56_{. I therefore did not analyse the association of the traits}

with this variable since the samples were too small to warrant meaningful analysis.

54 _{T-tests for each sample are : t(568) = -23.46, p < 0.001 for the Big Five sample; t(155) = -11.42, p <}

0.001 for the HEXACO sample; t(531) = -22.51, p < 0.001 for the Empathy sample; t(519) = -20, p < 0.001 for the Dark Triad sample.

55 _{T-tests for each sample are: t(568) = -9.24, p < 0.001 for the Big Five sample; t(155) = -6.05, p <}

0.001 for the HEXACO sample; t(531) = -9.54, p < 0.001 for the Empathy sample; t(519) = -8.3, p < 0.001 for the Dark Triad sample.

56 _{The sample sizes for the different samples were as follows: 62 for the Big Five; 14 for the}

Table 3 - Descriptive statistics - dependent variables

Sample Dependent _variable N Mean Std. _dev. Min Max Skew. Kurt

Entire sample SRI Interest 2682 2.42 1.19 1 5 0.07 1.7 SRI-Ever-invested 3022 0.17 0.38 0 1 1.72 3.95 SRI Proportion 255 16.79 22.38 .001 99 1.96 6.29 Big Five sample SRI Interest 494 2.45 1.18 1 5 0.01 1.69 SRI-Ever-invested 569 0.19 0.39 0 1 1.57 3.46 SRI Proportion 62 12.90 19.14 .001 91.79 2.57 9.76 HEXACO sample SRI Interest 140 2.46 1.20 1 5 0.01 1.65 SRI-Ever-invested 156 0.15 0.36 0 1 1.99 4.96 SRI Proportion 14 17.76 20.67 .23 65.5 1.11 3.05 Empathy sample SRI Interest 474 2.52 1.19 1 5 -0.1 1.72 SRI-Ever-invested 532 0.19 0.40 0 1 1.55 3.41 SRI Proportion 49 12.57 15.26 .5 67.6 1.72 5.54 Dark Triad sample SRI Interest 472 2.45 1.19 1 5 0.04 1.66 SRI-Ever-invested 520 0.15 0.36 0 1 1.92 4.68 SRI Proportion 43 16.06 21.14 .45 94 2.14 7.18

The first dependent variable 'SRI-Interest' is the answer to the questions: "To what degree would you say that you are interested in investing in SRI assets?" that was only presented to those investors who reported to currently not have any money invested in SRI assets. The item is scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all interested) to 5 (Very interested). The mid-point of this scale - 3 - corresponds to the answer "indifferent". Across the entire sample (2,682) investors reported to be not interested in investing in SRI (M = 2.42, SD = 1.19). In other words investors reported to have less interest in SRI rather than being indifferent, this difference was significant in a one-sided t-test, t(2,681) = -25.44, p < 0.001. This is true for all of the samples57. Ceteris paribus investors, therefore, are not very interested in investing in SRI. Furthermore, across the entire sample of 3,022 investors only 17% (514) investors reported to ever have invested in SRI assets. This is comparable across the different sample (19% in the Big Five sample; 15% in the HEXACO; 19% in the Empathy sample: and 16% in the Dark Triad sample). Furthermore, tables B4, B5, B6, and B7 in the appendix provide an overview of the pairwise correlations for the BFI-S, the HEXACO, the Empathy, and the Dark Triad sample, respectively.

57 _{For the Big Five sample the one sided t-test result was t(493) = -10.3664, p < 0.001; for the} HEXACO sample t(139) = -5.3, p < 0.001; for the Empathy sample t(473) = -8.7334, p < 0.001; and for the Dark Triad t(473) = -8.7334, p < 0.001.