The Influence of Media-Driven Investor Attention on Clean Technology Investment: Investigating the Role of News Sentiment and Political Orientation

Details

Supervisors

Shrestha, Prabal

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

enThis thesis examines how investor attention – proxied by legal newspaper coverage of clean technology news articles – influences stock returns of clean technology companies. Focusing on 108 U.S. and UK listed firms across hydrogen, ammonia, methanol, e-fuels, and electric vehicle sectors, it tests five hypotheses linking overall news coverage effect, sentiment (positive/neutral/negative), political alignment (left/center/right/far-right), their interaction, and technology-match effects to cumulative abnormal returns (CARs). Employing event-study methodology over 2007–2022 to compute 10-day CARs via a CAPM framework, followed by fixed effects panel regressions, the analysis reveals that both positive and negative tones enhance short-term CARs relative to neutral coverage, while news outlets at the political extremes (especially far-right and left) amplify these effects. Technology-match analysis demonstrates that methanol and hydrogen companies benefit significantly when news specifically addresses their core technology, and methanol coverage generates spillover effects across sectors. These findings underscore media coverage and content as small, but significant factors in influencing clean technology stock returns. Future research could extend this framework by examining investor attention effects in markets outside the U.S. and UK, and by integrating other attention measures (e.g. social media or search data) to capture real-time dynamics.