Socially Responsible Investment and cleaner production in the Asia Pacific: does it pay to be good?

The growth of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) has been impressive during the last two decades. Such growth has stimulated financing of developments and improvements in cleaner production methods, consumption patterns of responsible corporations and, in general, changed behaviour towards corporate sustainability. However, cleaner production investments vary across different regions in the world for several reasons such as: capital availability, the stage of development of banking systems, the existence of appropriate finance mechanisms, available corporate know-how and technology risks. This research aimed to provide relevant information about the outcomes of integrating environmental, social and governance issues for cleaner production into investment strategies in the Asia Pacific region for managers, practitioners, academics, institutions and investors. Research focused on analysing the performance of the Dow Jones Sustainability Asia Pacific index (DJSI-AP) because the index applies a ‘Best in Class’ investment screening method, being more relevant to fostering cleaner production. Results indicate that the social and environmental screening process neither represents a burden of cost generation for companies, nor an additional burden on their SRI financial performance. Finally, the research results emphasize that investors can support businesses committed to increasing their environmental performance through improvements in cleaner production processes.