Corporate Social Responsibility,information Transparency And Debt Financing Costs

As an important way of external financing,debt financing plays a key role in enterprise operation and future development.However,in the context of imperfect capital market and tight credit funds,how to use less financing costs to obtain sufficient loans has become a common problem for many enterprises.Many scholars discuss the factors that affect the cost of debt financing from the perspective of corporate governance,but they fail to solve the problem that the information asymmetry between enterprises and creditors leads to the greater risk of creditors' prediction.In recent years,corporate social responsibility has been widely concerned.Creditors not only rely on financial information,but also consider non-financial information represented by corporate social responsibility to evaluate enterprises.At the same time,the positive performance of corporate social responsibility may improve the information asymmetry between enterprises and creditors to a certain extent.Therefore,corporate social responsibility also affects the cost of debt financing.However,the mechanism and direction of influence have not yet formed a unified conclusion.After literature review,it is found that neglecting the individual influence of each subdivision dimension of corporate social responsibility on debt financing cost and lack of in-depth analysis on the specific mechanism of corporate social responsibility affecting debt financing cost may be the main reason for the differences in existing research conclusions.Therefore,based on the stakeholder theory,signal transmission hypothesis and agency theory,this paper selects the data of China's Shenzhen Stock Exchange A-share heavy pollution listed companies as the research sample.Firstly,based on the specific division of corporate social responsibility into technical corporate social responsibility and institutional corporate social responsibility,this paper further explores the impact of each subdivision dimension on debt financing cost.Secondly,considering that the improvement of information transparency helps to improve the information asymmetry between enterprises and creditors,when analyzing the mechanism of corporate social responsibility affecting debt financing cost,the paper introduces the variable of information transparency,and discusses the intermediary role of information transparency between corporate social responsibility and debt financing cost.Thirdly,in view of the external governance role of media supervision,when analyzing the intermediary role of information transparency,media supervision is further included as a regulatory variable to investigate the regulatory role of media supervision on the intermediary effect of information transparency,and anattempt is made to put forward a path that considers the impact of corporate social responsibility including information transparency and media supervision on the cost of debt financing Model.Finally,based on the special economic structure of our country and the influence of property right,the paper further compares the difference between the social responsibility of state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises on the cost of debt financing.The results show that: first,the higher the level of performance,the lower the cost of debt financing.The good social performance of enterprises can help to establish a good relationship with stakeholders,transmit positive signals to creditors,weaken the information asymmetry between enterprises and them,and reduce the debt financing cost of enterprises.Second,both technical corporate social responsibility and institutional corporate social responsibility are negatively related to the cost of debt financing,but compared with undertaking institutional corporate social responsibility,the effect of reducing debt financing cost by fulfilling technical corporate social responsibility is more significant.Third,information transparency plays a part of intermediary role between corporate social responsibility and debt financing cost.Enterprises with better social responsibility performance are more inclined to disclose information,which is conducive to the improvement of information transparency.Higher information transparency can improve the information asymmetry between enterprises and creditors,ensure the effectiveness of positive signal transmission,and improve the external query on the responsibility performance motivation of heavily polluting enterprises,thus reducing the cost of debt financing.Fourth,media supervision is in a positive direction It also discusses the intermediary role of information transparency between corporate social responsibility and debt financing cost.That is to say,the stronger the media supervision,the more significant the effect of information transparency on the reduction of debt financing cost.Fifthly,the social responsibility of enterprises with different property rights has different effect on the reduction of debt financing cost.Compared with state-owned enterprises,non-state-owned enterprises have more significant effect in reducing debt financing cost.Through the analysis of this paper,on the one hand,we can enrich the research on the impact of corporate social responsibility and its subdivision dimension on debt financing cost from the theoretical level,provide a path model of corporate social responsibility including information transparency and media supervision on debt financing cost,and clarify the impact mechanism between corporate social responsibility and debt financing cost to a certain extent.It can provide new empirical evidence for the study of the heterogeneity of corporate social responsibility and debt financing cost.On the other hand,the corresponding research conclusions can also provide many enterprises with the motivation to fulfill their responsibilities from the practical level,at the same time,point out the direction or provide reference for the construction of corporate social responsibility.