To understand what motivates individuals to look at their pension situation and make adequate savings decisions, we conduct two field experiments with 226,946 and 257,433 pension fund participants. We find peer-information statements do not increase the rate at which individuals check their pension information, but lottery-type financial incentives do. Offering a few large prizes rather than many small prizes is most effective. However, the uptake of pension information does not lead to improved pension knowledge nor to increased self-reported savings three weeks after our intervention.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have created societal and political pressure for pension funds to address sustainable investing. We run two field surveys (n = 1,669, n = 3,186) with a pension fund that grants its members a real vote on its sustainable-investment policy. Two-thirds of participants are willing to expand the fund’s engagement with companies based on selected SDGs, even when they expect engagement to hurt financial performance. Support remains strong after the fund implements the choice. A key reason is participants’ strong social preferences.

To understand why investors hold socially responsible mutual funds, we link administrative data to survey responses and behavior in incentivized experiments. We find that both social preferences and social signaling explain socially responsible investment (SRI) decisions. Financial motives play less of a role. Socially responsible investors in our sample expect to earn lower returns on SRI funds than on conventional funds and pay higher management fees. This suggests that investors are willing to forgo financial performance in order to invest in accordance with their social preferences.