Cash flow timing skills of socially responsible mutual fund investors

•SR investors' cash flow timing skills neither worsen nor improve their results.•They show good (perverse) timing for net purchase (withdrawal) decisions.•Sophisticated and better informed investors make better cash flow timing decisions.•Green fund investors show the worst cash flow timing skills.•Religious fund investors' results differ most from conventional ones.

This paper studies, for the first time, the cash flow timing skills of socially responsible (SR) mutual fund investors. Our findings show that SR investors neither worsen nor improve their returns according to their cash flow timing decisions, although they show good timing for net purchase and perverse timing for net withdrawal decisions. When controlling for fund characteristics, investors in larger, institutional, with longer mean manager tenure, lower expense ratio, no load, lower mean turnover ratio and a fee level below the average funds, show better timing results; in other words, sophisticated and better informed investors make better cash flow timing decisions. Controlling for SR strategy, green fund investors (our proxy for profit-seeking investors) had the worst results (similar to those obtained for conventional investors in the prior literature), and religious fund investors (our proxy for the values-driven profile) had results that were most different from conventional investors.