The Influence Of Informal System On The Corporate Social Responsibility Report Assurance

The exposure of pseudo-social responsibility behaviors such as Vanke's "Poison Floor" and Baidu "Wei Zexi" incidents highlighted the chaotic phenomenon of uneven quality of China's corporate social responsibility report.The credibility of the report has been greatly reduced.Therefore,for enterprises,the assurance of social responsibility report is undoubtedly a powerful means to enhance the credibility of their report data and enhance the confidence of the users of the report.However,at present,the number of companies that voluntarily perform certification in China is small,and the proportion of attestation is relatively low.Therefore,it is particularly urgent to study the factors that affect the corporate social responsibility report assurance.For China,which is in a special period of economic transition,formal systems such as laws are not yet sound,and the promotion of corporate social responsibility performance is very limited.The informal system can largely compensate for the deficiencies of the formal system.The research on the influencing factors of forensics mainly focuses on the internal factors of the company and the formal system.Therefore,this paper mainly studies the influence of the informal system on the assurance behavior of the enterprise.The innovation of this article is mainly based on media supervision,trust environment,and industry constraints,and considers the factors that influence social responsibility report assurance from the perspective of informal system.This article takes the company that released the social responsibility report from 2011 to 2016 as the research object.First of all,we reviewed the literature on the social responsibility report assurance,the influencing factors of social responsibility report assurance,and the impact of the informal system on social responsibility report assurance,and conducted a descriptive analysis of the status of my social responsibility report and assurance.Secondly,the relevant definitions of social responsibility,social responsibility report,social responsibility report assurance,and informal systems are clarified.The feasibility of reporting forensic activities is described in terms of legitimacy theory,principal-agent theory,stakeholder theory,and signal transmission theory.Then it studies the influence of the informal system represented by media coverage,trust environment and industry pressure on the assurance behavior of enterprises and makes hypothetical derivation.Secondly,the author empirically tests the influence of the informal system represented by media coverage,trust environment and industry constraints on the CSR reports assurance using the Logit regression model.The study shows that the higher the degree of media coverage,the higher the degree of regional trust,and the greater the industry's binding force,the more willing the company to conduct social responsibility report authentication.At the same time,there is a significant positive correlation between the nature of equity,scale and profitability of enterprises and corporate social responsibility report assurance activities,and there is a significant negative correlation between capital structure and corporate social responsibility report assurance activities.According to the empirical research results,this paper proposes relevant policy recommendations from five aspects: giving full play to the media's powerful role in promoting CSR report assurance;strengthening the construction of trust levels in various regions;encouraging high quality businesses to play a leading role in social responsibility reporting assurance activities;leading state-owned enterprises to “de-leverage” and promote the implementation of social responsibility-related work;and improving the relevant legal systems in the field of social responsibility in China.Finally,based on the existing research limitations,the future prospect is put forward.