Comparative study on business culture and investors' behaviour toward sustainable index change: Japan vs. the USA and Europe

This paper examines the difference in investors' attitudes toward sustainability index change between the USA, Europe and Japan based on their business culture, using the short-term event study method using the dataset of the DJSI index change and stock prices. The findings of this study indicate large differences between the US, European, and Japanese markets. The comparative analysis demonstrates speculative or temporal attitudes in the US market and positive valuation in the European market, reflecting their business culture, whereas less attention and negative response to inclusion in the sustainable index was found for the Japanese market, especially for Japanese institutional investors. The difference between Japanese investors and others are due to the immaturity of the Japanese capital and product markets.