Sustainable Venture Capital Investments: An Enabler Investigation

Investing in sustainable projects can help tackle the current sustainability challenges. Venture capital investments can contribute significantly to the growth of sustainable start-ups. Sustainable venture capital (SVC) research is just emerging. This paper identifies enablers for sustainable ventur...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Elena Antarciuc, Qinghua Zhu, Jaber Almarri, Senlin Zhao, Yunting Feng, Martin Agyemang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2018-04-01
Series:Sustainability
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/4/1204
Description
Summary:Investing in sustainable projects can help tackle the current sustainability challenges. Venture capital investments can contribute significantly to the growth of sustainable start-ups. Sustainable venture capital (SVC) research is just emerging. This paper identifies enablers for sustainable venture capital investments in Saudi Arabia taking into account different stakeholders and firm’s tangible and intangible resources. Using perspectives from venture capital experts in Saudi Arabia and the grey-based Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method, this study pinpoints the most critical enablers and investigates their causal and effect interconnections. The methodological process consists of reviewing the SVC literature and consulting the experts to identify the SVC enablers, creating a questionnaire, acquiring the answers from four experts, analyzing the data with grey-based DEMATEL and performing a sensitivity analysis. The government use of international standards, policies and regulations for sustainable investments, the commitment of the venture capitalists to sustainability and their deep understanding of sustainable business models are the most influential enablers. The paper concludes with implications for different actors, limitations and prospective directions for the sustainable venture capital research.
ISSN:2071-1050