Regional Happiness And Corporate Responsible Behavior

Corporate social responsibility is not only the basis of sustainable development,but also an effective way for enterprises to embed themselves in society and participate in social governance.How to promote enterprises to fulfill social responsibility and achieve sustainable development has attracted academic attention.According to the classic classification of corporate social responsibility,charitable responsibility ranks the most secondary in corporate social responsibility,belonging to the outer and discretionary social responsibility,while the inner more fundamental social responsibility includes economic responsibility,legal responsibility and moral responsibility.Corporate responsibility is the basis of corporate social responsibility;and it involves the balance between maintaining the interests of stakeholders and paying attention to growth and sustainable development in business management.Corporate responsibility behavior plays a more definite role in promoting social welfare,which essentially reflects corporate social responsibility.This study examines the driving factors of corporate responsibility behavior;and it is vital to the long-term healthy development of enterprises and the improvement of social welfare.Because of the social embeddedness of enterprises,social psychology has an important influence on enterprise behavior.Theoretically,happiness is a dimension of psychological capital,and regional happiness belongs to the psychological capital shared by social members in the region,which has the function of guiding enterprise decision-making.Taking Chinese A-share listed companies as research samples,this study empirically investigated the influence of regional happiness on corporate responsibility behavior by constructing city-level happiness data.The main conclusions are as follows:First,higher tax compliance can be regarded as a dimension of corporate responsibility behavior.Businesses pay taxes to the government,which supports various public goods and infrastructure to promote public welfare.As a modification to the rational hypothesis,the social psychological model of taxation holds that taxpayers’ tax decision is not only utility maximization under the constraints of external environment in the traditional sense,but also influenced by psychological factors.In this way,regional happiness may affect the tax compliance of local enterprises.The relationship between happiness and corporate tax compliance has two sides.On the one hand,the high prosocial tendency accompanied by happiness will improve corporate tax compliance,which is manifested as higher corporate tax payment level.On the other hand,happiness may also increase the tolerance of enterprises to potential risks of tax avoidance,making enterprises more likely to engage in tax avoidance,and at this time,corporate tax compliance will be reduced.Based on the above analysis,a competitive hypothesis is proposed.The empirical results show that the happiness of the city where the firm is located has a significant impact on corporate tax compliance,and the higher the happiness is,the higher the tax level of the firm is.The mechanism test shows that happiness can restrain the negative impact of financing constants on tax compliance and strengthen the restraint role of internal control,thus improving corporate tax compliance.As a non-economic mechanism,regional happiness can promote corporate tax compliance by inhibiting tax avoidance activities caused by economic motivation.Further research found that the "tax compliance effect" of happiness was more significant in companies with low social supervision,high management risk appetite and weak board supervision.Secondly,green innovation can reduce environmental pollution,save energy,and help realize green and sustainable development coordinated between environmental protection and enterprise competitiveness.Enterprise green innovation emphasizes pollution prevention and control by introducing new systems,products and processes to reduce environmental burden and bring economic value to enterprises.Enterprises’ green innovation is an important embodiment of enterprises’active fulfillment of environmental and social responsibilities.Happiness is closely related to prosocial attributes,which can promote enterprises’ environmental responsibility practice.As a kind of regional psychological capital,regional happiness can encourage people to break through uncertainty and pursue innovation,and form a significant potential driving force for enterprises’ green innovation activities.This study analyzes the impact of regional happiness on green innovation,and empirically tests the impact of regional happiness on green innovation by taking the data of Chinese listed companies as samples.The study finds that higher regional happiness can improve the output of green innovation of enterprises.Happiness can help companies get financial support to promote green innovation.Further research shows that the green innovation promotion effect of happiness is particularly significant when the shareholding ratio of institutional investors is high,the firm has no political connection and the economic uncertainty is high.Finally,the extent to which an enterprise voluntarily discloses information is also one of the standards to measure the fulfillment of corporate responsibility.Compared with mandatory disclosure,voluntary disclosure provides investors with more information about the current situation of enterprises and further reduces information asymmetry with investors.It helps investors and creditors and other stakeholders to make wise decisions and promote the optimal allocation and effective use of resources,so it is a corporate responsibility behavior.This study explores the relationship between regional well-being and corporate voluntary information disclosure.The study finds that regional well-being has a positive role in promoting corporate voluntary information disclosure.Happiness promotes voluntary information disclosure by means of supervision of local independent director.Happiness also promotes voluntary information disclosure of enterprises by improving accounting information quality.The supervision of actual controller strengthens the positive effect of regional happiness on voluntary information disclosure.The effect of happiness on voluntary information disclosure is more significant when the communication mechanism between enterprises and investors is weak,enterprises receive less social attention and the regional institutional environment is poor.Our study makes the following contribution to existing literature.First,this study is helpful to expand the research on the influencing factors of corporate responsibility behavior.Studies on happiness pay more attention to the influencing factors of happiness,but little attention to the influence of happiness on corporate behavior,and lack of analysis on corporate tax compliance,corporate green innovation and voluntary information disclosure.This study links happiness with the above three corporate responsibility behaviors,which helps to enrich the research of happiness economics in the field of corporate activities.This study also expands the research perspective of regional characteristics and corporate financial behavior,and examines the influence of social psychological factors on corporate behavior from the perspective of regional happiness,providing a new idea for the study of the micro-economic effects of regional characteristics.Secondly,the influencing factors of corporate tax compliance are investigated from the perspective of happiness,which develops a new research perspective for studying the influencing factors of corporate tax decision-making and provides policy implications for utilizing the value of happiness.This study found that rising happiness promoted corporate tax compliance,and the "tax compliance effect" of happiness proved the important role of non-mandatory mechanism in encouraging tax compliance.Thirdly,green innovation has given new kinetic energy to the sustainable development of society.This study demonstrates the positive effect of happiness on green innovation from the micro enterprise level,and expands the research on the driving factors of green innovation in enterprises.The results of this study can provide clues for understanding the determinants of enterprise green innovation,and provide relevant enlightenment for driving the value of regional psychological capital in the field of green innovation.Fourthly,the research in the field of voluntary information disclosure focuses on evaluating the influence of internal characteristics of enterprises from the perspective of governance mechanism.In this study,the regional psychological characteristics are analyzed as the factors influencing enterprises’ voluntary information disclosure,which expands the research on the determinants of enterprises’ voluntary information disclosure.In terms of policy implications,this study responds to the transformation of economic growth mode implemented by the Chinese government in recent years,which aims at improving people’s livelihood and improving residents’ happiness.The transformation of economic growth mode has improved residents’ happiness,so what impact will the improvement of residents’ happiness have on the social economy?There is a lack of evaluation in these aspects.This study,based on the perspective of influencing corporate responsibility behavior,combined with the background of China’s advocacy of innovative,coordinated,green,open and shared economic development,provides support for the transformation of Chinese government’s economic growth mode.