| Social philanthropy is important to achieve common prosperity,and corporate philanthropy is critical in China’s social philanthropy.The“voluntary”and“altruism”of corporate philanthropic giving reflects the value of prosocial,and the endogenous contradiction between“altruism”and profit maximization lead corporate philanthropic giving becomes one of the most important issues in corporate social responsibility.Corporate philanthropic giving varies across industries.The natural characteristic of“culture”and“economy”makes cultural industry have to take importance to both profitability and value guidance,cultural firms engage in philanthropic giving can display the prosocial and realize the function of value guidance.There are a few studies detect the corporate philanthropic giving at industrial level.Hence,the study about cultural firm’s philanthropic giving will provide new insight and knowledge about corporate philanthropic giving in China,which will enhance the understanding a about philanthropic giving,and improve philanthropy governance in China.This study applies corporate strategy theory,principle-agent theory,and institutional theory to analysis listed cultural firms’philanthropic giving from 2003 to2020.This study conducts statistical analysis,literature analysis,theoretical analysis,and empirical analysis to display the philanthropic giving of cultural firms,and to reveal the link between philanthropic giving and corporate finance performance,the peer effect mechanism of corporate philanthropic giving,and how corporate philanthropic giving peer effect influence corporate finance performance.This study reached the following conclusions.First,cultural firms actively engage in philanthropic giving.Statistical analysis demonstrates that cultural firms’philanthropic giving ranked among top 20 of 78 sectors,and there are 4 sectors led by“News and Publishing”ranked in 2nd-5th.Moreover,the statistical analysis reveal cultural firms are more willing to donate and donate more since 2003,and“News and Publishing”sector shows the highest level of motivation.Additionally,this study also finds that there are almost 60%loss-reporting firms engages in corporate giving.Those finding provide evidence that cultural firms are positively engaged in prosocial issues.Second,the impact of cultural firms’philanthropic giving on corporate finance performance is adjusted by firm size.Based on corporate strategy and principle-agent theory this study conduct unbalance panel regression to detect the impact of corporate philanthropic giving on corporate finance performance.This study gets several findings.First,based on corporate strategy perspective,only the large and reliable cultural firms can enhance ROA and ROE through philanthropic giving,but there is no advertisement effect of cultural firms.Second,cultural firms philanthropic giving is not a kind of agency cost since it won’t negatively influence corporate finance performance,even under the moderation of the first type and the second type of agency cost.Third,the extending study shows that corporate philanthropic giving can’t help cultural firms to improve productivity and to obtain government subsidies.Third,institutional theory is an important theory to explain cultural firms philanthropic giving.Based on institutional theory and corporate imitation theory,this study conducts GMM regression to detect the peer effect,and tests the mediation mechanism and moderation mechanism of the peer effect.The empirical results reveal several meaningful findings.First,there is“Peer effect”in cultural firms’philanthropic giving,namely,the donation willingness and level of i cultural firm will be influenced by the giving behavior of other firms in the same sector.Second,semi-coercive isomorphism and imitative isomorphism can explain the philanthropic giving“peer effect”.Especially,the imitative isomorphism is leading by rival position maintaining rather than learning the leaders.Further,this study also finds“peer effect”caused by institutional pressure suppresses the impact of economy policy uncertainty on corporate philanthropic giving,and institutional pressure significantly strengthens the positive impact of corporate visibility on philanthropic giving,moreover,institutional pressure significantly alleviates the negative impact of manager ability on corporate philanthropic giving.Moreover,semi-coercive isomorphism positively influences state-owned and non-state-owned culture companies’philanthropic giving,and the positive influence on state-owned companies is larger.Forth,this study offers new insight on the link of corporate philanthropic giving“peer effect”,inappropriate giving,and the finance performance.（1）the significantly positive influence of semi-coercive isomorphism on the excess giving is not robust,but the negative influence on negative giving is significant and robust.（2）The impact of excess giving on Tobin’s Q is inverse U-shape,but it cannot significantly influence ROA and ROE.The inverse U-shape between excess giving and Tobin’s Q also exists in state-owned cultural companies and non-state-owned cultural companies.（3）The influence of excess giving and negative giving on corporate finance performance varies from state-owned companies to non-state-owned companies.Namely,the negative giving significantly and negatively influence the Tobin’s Q of state-owned companies,but it has no significant influence on non-state-owned companies.The excess giving of non-state-owned companies exacts negative influence on ROA,and exacts a“U-shaped”impact on ROE.The marginal contribution of this study contains 4 parts.First,this study extended the understanding about the driven mechanism of cultural firms philanthropic giving.Specifically,this study clarifies the concept of corporate philanthropic giving and peer effect,and extends the knowledge about imitation isomorphism,and provide understanding about the mechanism of economic policy uncertainty and manager ability in the peer effect of corporate philanthropic giving.Second,this study explore the influence of corporate philanthropic giving’s peer effect,which provide knowledge about the peer effect mechanism of corporate philanthropic giving.Third,this study shows the whole picture about cultural firm’s philanthropic giving,and this will enhance the understanding about corporate philanthropic giving.Finally,this study proposes the management suggestion to enhance philanthropy governance,which will demonstrate to realize the aim of common prosperity. |
