Climate Change and Mutual Fund Voting on Climate Proposals

This paper explores whether investors’ personal experience with climate change affects their voting behavior on climate-change-related proposals. We find that fund managers exposed to abnormally hot temperatures are significantly more likely to support climate proposals. We further show that the effect is persistent. We observe significant heterogeneity in the effect of hot temperatures, depending on firm-level climate risk, the quality of the proposals, fund investment strategy, and prior awareness of climate change. Fund managers’ personal experience with climate change matters for the outcome of climate proposals as it affects the aggregate support they receive. Fund managers exposed to abnormally hot temperatures are also more likely to divest from stocks with greater exposure to climate change.