We use LLMs as synthetic survey respondents to elicit green tastes, return beliefs, portfolio allocations, and investment motives from 480 retail and 60 institutional investor identities.
We use LLMs as synthetic survey respondents to elicit green tastes, return beliefs, portfolio allocations, and investment motives from 480 retail and 60 institutional investor identities. Compared with retail, institutions report weaker tastes yet greener portfolio tilts, citing outside pressure. A greener tilt therefore need not indicate a stronger taste for greenness. Retail tastes depend mostly on political affiliation, institutional tastes on type and geography. Beliefs differ across the three ESG dimensions, with high-governance portfolios expected to outperform. We reconstruct survey responses under 2014--2025 information environments using date-masked information modules shuffled across years. Tastes vary little over time, but beliefs about green portfolios become more pessimistic after 2020. The two reconstructed series relate to different real-world data: tastes to measures of green demand, beliefs to measures of attention. Pastor serves as an independent director and trustee of Vanguard. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Vanguard or its funds. We thank Alessandro Dodon for excellent research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. In addition toworking papers, the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals—theNBER Reporter, theNBER Digest, theBulletin on Health, theBulletin on the Economics of Alzheimer's, and theBulletin on Entrepreneurship—as well asresearch spotlights, lectures, and panel videos.