Sustainable development and enterprise: do foreign investors care?

Do foreign investors care about promoting sustainable entrepreneurship and development? We find little evidence indicating that they do care. Our findings suggest foreign investors prefer nations with less punitive carbon emission regimes. Another worrying trend is a negative relationship between educational parity and foreign investment inflows. This counterintuitive relationship shows that foreign investors care more about cost-benefit considerations than their moral duty of investing in greener industries and sectors. Using panel data from five countries for a sample period of 19 years, we find that the higher costs of meeting sustainability goals act as a detriment to foreign investors. This shows that governments must take the initiative and pay the upfront costs to develop the infrastructure for sustainable entrepreneurial activities.