An Empirical Study Of The Correlativity Between CSR Performance And Corporate Value Of Agricultural Listed Companies

With the progress of economical globalization, the development of civil society and the change of consuming interest, people from all levels of our society begin to pay more and more attention to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Therefore the competition among different firms is not only on price and technology but also on CSR. Namely CSR has become an essential component of the competitiveness of a company. To practice CSR is beneficial to build a new image for a company, to promote a harmonious development between human society and natural environment and the sustainable development of the enterprise. So it is imperative to implement CSR. Playing a leading role in agricultural modernization and industrialization, agricultural listed companies would be rewarded from putting CSR into effect and serve as a model for other agriculture-related enterprises. This paper makes an attempt to study some problems related to CSR of agricultural listed companies based on stakeholder theory.By defining the concept of CSR from the aspect of stakeholder theory, the paper explained the social responsibility for different stakeholders of agricultural listed companies. Then an indices system is formed to assess the CSR performance of agricultural listed companies. The index system is revised owing to the availability of relevant data which collected from the year book and financial statements 2009 of 44 agricultural listed companies. The weights of these indices are calculated by way of entropy, revised CRITIC and revised DIDF techniques. Analysis is also made to explain why these indexes are feasible to reflect different items of CSR. Evaluation of the CSR contribution to different stakeholders of these companies is made by using the weights calculated. Furthermore the difference of CSR performance of these listed companies is analyzed accordingly.The mutual link between CSR performance and financial value of listed companies has something to do with the implementation of CSR of these companies. In other words,a firm is more likely to implement CSR if CSR has positive impact on its financial performance.So this study analyzed the relationship between CSR performance and corporate value of agricultural listed companies. Regression analysis is conducted using the data from CSR performance (the explaining variables) evaluation and Tobin's Q index (the dependent variable) of agricultural listed companies.Finally several possible advices are put forward to improve and to promote the CSR practice of agricultural listed companies. These suggestions, which concerns with forming the external pressure, and the benefits and tactics of implementing CSR for these companies, are mainly aimed at improving the CSR performance of consumers, environment and employees.