Investerare & start-ups med fokus på hållbar utveckling : Discrete Choice Experiments för att undersöka investerares benägenhet att investera i hållbar utveckling

Sammanfattning: A sustainable development becomes more and more important with an increasing number of catastrophic and long-term changes to the environment due to global warming. This also means that all the actors in the society needs to take their responsibility to combat this development. One of these actors are the private sector where the investors plays a large part in which companies that gets to develop their ideas and make a difference in the world. So, the question is: are investors taking that responsibility today and invest in start-ups with a focus on sustainable development in their business plans. This thesis aims to study how inclined investors are to invest in start-ups with a focus on sustainable development in their business plan. This is tested though Discrete Choice Experiments where 14 investors got to choose between three different companies with different levels of focus on sustainable development. Company A with the least amount of sustainability, company B with some focus and company C with a high focus on sustainable development. The Discrete Choice Experiments were distributed through a survey format where the companies were represented with a Business Model Canvas each and the investors first got to choose between company A & B, then A & C, and then company B & C. The results show that investors chose company A with the least amount of focus on sustainable development in 26 percent of the cases, company B with some focus in 45 percent, and company C with a high amount of focus in 29 percent of the cases. The study also shows a variation between different groups of investors, i.e. the investors who identified themselves as women were more inclined on investing in more sustainable options then men, and angel investors showed a clear willingness to invest in sustainability compared to venture capitals. The conclusions of the study are that its purpose was fulfilled and that the research questions was answered, investors showed an inclination to investing in companies with some focus on sustainable development but not too much. The results of the study can be used by companies in need of investments since they can see what group they should focus on to increase their chances. It is despite this also important to remember that the reliability and the validity of the study can be criticised with flaws for example in the reputability of the results. Future research within the area should study larger populations of investors to see if the same patterns repeat itself in other groups. It should also split the different attributes of the business model to see if different attributes play a larger part when investors decide which company to invest in.