Heterogeneous investor attention to climate risk: Evidence from a unique dataset

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has led global investors to draw a parallel between pandemics and climate risk, focusing their attention on climate risk. We examine COVID-19's effect on investors' awareness of climate risk by analysing novel trading data for Korean-listed firms that include investor information. We observe that institutional investors divest from high-emission firms during the market crash induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas individual investors do not, suggesting that investor attention to climate risk is heterogeneous.