Investing for good – Uncovering crowd investors' motivations to participate in sustainability-oriented crowdlending

Sustainable ventures that pursue social and ecological goals alongside economic profitability can contribute to innovative solutions aimed at conserving natural resources and creating social value. However, as these ventures are not solely focused on profit maximization, they often face particular difficulties in acquiring external funding from traditional capital sources, making crowdlending an attractive alternative. In this study, we explore investor motivations to partake in crowdlending for sustainable ventures by conducting a qualitative study based on 18 open-ended interviews (approximately 12 h of audio recordings) with investors of a crowdlending platform targeted at sustainable ventures. Our findings suggest that balancing financial, personal, prosocial, and communal motives shapes investors' decision-making approaches. Hereby, our research contributes to an ongoing debate on the role of financial and nonfinancial motivations in investor decisions, particularly in light of the rise of return-oriented crowdlending platforms specialized in sustainable ventures.