Personal Values and Sustainable Investing: Evidence from Business Angels’ Publicly Expressed Value Orientations

Abstract For investors, investments in sustainability-oriented ventures often involve trade-offs between financial prospects and sustainability goals. In such settings, investors’ judgments may reflect not only available information but also their personal values: enduring, trans-situational motivational goals that guide judgment and behavior. We argue that personal values are especially salient for business angels (BAs), professional investors who commit personal funds in a highly discretionary early-stage context. Drawing on person–environment (PE) fit theory and Schwartz’s personal values framework, we assess how BAs’ personal values relate to investments in sustainable versus non-sustainable portfolio ventures. Empirically, we link 13,195 BA investments to their publicly expressed value orientations, digitally inferred from their Twitter language. We find that value orientations toward universalism (concern for others and nature) and stimulation (curiosity and pursuit of challenge) are positively associated with sustainable investments, while achievement (self-enhancement) shows a weak negative association. The results remain largely robust across specifications, with slightly attenuated estimates for universalism. Overall, our findings suggest that interindividual heterogeneity in personal values helps explain variation in BAs’ sustainable venture investments, and that such orientations are reflected in investment behavior.