Corporate Social Responsibility Information Disclosure And Economic Performance

In the past decade,more and more companies have begun to disclose social responsibility information,so Corporate Social Responsibility Information Disclosure(CSRID),which takes"Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR)Report" as the main carriers,is becoming an important way not only for enterprises to send signals to the market,but also for people to understand and invest in enterprises.Under this background,whether CSRID can affect corporate economic performance(CEP)has gradually become an important issue that is concerned by all people.From the 1970s,scholars have conducted continued researches on the CSRID and Corporate Economic Performance(CEP)relationship.However,no consistent conclusion has been achieved in previous empirical studies.Now China is pushing for registration reform in stock issuing,in the future,CSRID will play an increasingly important role in the development of the enterprise itself,the supervision of the capital market and in the decision-making of stakeholders.Therefore,it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive research on CSRID and CEP in the context of China,and to clarify the exact relationship and mechanism between the two.This will not only promote the progress of the controversial issue of CSRID-CEP relationship,but also provide a better basis for people’s decision-making and action.Based on the above background,this paper focuses on Chinese context and carries out the following three aspects of research,which is the overall relationship of CSRID-CEP,the relationship between CSRID’s motivation and CEP and the relationship between CSRID’s strategies and CEP.At the first aspect,because of the CSRID-CEP relationship is not clear in previous studies,this paper conducted a comprehensive search of Chinese and English literature on relevant topics and selected 47 empirical literatures which research the CSRID-CEP relationship and take Chinese listed companies as samples,explored the overall relationship,causal mechanism and moderating factors between CSRID and CEP in China.The results show that the overall relationship between CSRID and CEP is weakly positive;the social responsibility information(SRI),the environmental information(El)and the carbon information(CI)are all positively related to CEP,and strength of their relationships(i.e.SRI and CEP,El and CEP,CI and CEP)increases in turn;CSRID and CEP are interactional and have a cross-period effect;CSRD measurement method,CEP measurement method,industry source,publishing attribute are four factors that have significant moderating effects on the CSRID-CEP relationship.At the second aspect,based on the social construction function of organizational discourse,this paper used the approach of topic model to extract topics from all 2007-2016 CSR reports of listed companies in China;through vertical and horizontal comparison among the topics,using semantic analysis and discourse analysis,this paper analyzed the distribution,evolution and tendency of topics in Chinese listed companies’ CSR reports,revealed the economic motivation and influencing factors of CSRID.The results show that the main motivation of CSRID is improving economic performances and then is communication with stakeholders;regulations,standards and handbooks have a strong"framing effect" on CSRID;current events and policies often become the trigger of dynamic adjustment of CSRID;the directing object of CSRID is generally consistent in the same industry,but different in different industries;political orientation and public policy provide guidance for CSRID.In the third aspect,based on the perspective of impression management theory,this paper took the 2009-2017 listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange as samples,and used the empirical research method to explore the interaction and intertemporal effects of CSRID’s strategies and CEP.The results show that the CSRID’s strategy has a negative impact on CEP,that is,the increasing of strategies in CSRID leads to reduction in CEP,while the facts-based CSRID can improve CEP;CSRID’s strategy has a "intertemporal effect" on CEP,which not only affects current CEP,but also affects later CEP;CEP also has a negative impact on CSRID’s strategy,i.e.,poor CEP can lead more strategies in CSRID,while good CEP can reduce strategies in CSRID,and this situation exists in both state-owned and private enterprises and is more obvious in state-owned enterprises..Compared with the existing research,the main contributions of this paper are as follows.Firstly,based on Chinese background,this paper finds a staged answer and moderating factors to the controversial issue of CSRID-CEP relationship.It not only provides more general conclusions for clarifying this issue but also helps to understand the reasons why the CSRID-CEP relationship is not consistent in previous studies,and it can provide clear direction and richer empirical evidence for the later research.Secondly,based on the social responsibility report,this paper reveals the interactive relationship between the motivation,strategies and performance of CSRID.It not only provides an in-depth answer to the CSRID-CEP relationship but also can help people understand the reasons for the main problems existing in China’s CSRID and its effects.What’s more,it provides a new and feasible way to grasp the complex and abstract problems such as the motive and strategy of CSRID.