The Effect Of Regional Integrity On Corporate Social Responsibility:Evidence From A-Share Markets

China is facing the challenges and opportunities of economic transformation.In the process of China’s economic development from high-speed development to highquality development,some issues have been attracted extensive concern from the public.One issue is the lack of corporate social responsibility(CSR).In recent years,food safety problems,product quality problems,environmental pollution problems and production safety accidents occur frequently,which reflects the indifference of some Chinese enterprises to the legitimate rights and interests of stakeholders.Another issue is promoting the construction of the clean and integrity administration and anticorruption campaign.Since the 18 th convention of CCP,anti-corruption campaign has shown a high-pressure situation and achieved remarkable results.Meanwhile,China has been facing with struggle against corruption over a long period of time,with the situation of anti-corruption is still grave and complex.When enterprises interacting with local government,the construction of close and clean government-enterprise relationship is regarded as an important part of anti-corruption campaign.Does the integrity of local officials have an impact on the performance of CSR?This paper selects A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2017 as the research object to explore the effect of regional integrity on CSR.The results show that: firstly,CSR performance is on average positively correlated with regional integrity.Secondly,regional integrity has a greater positive impact on CSR performance for non-stateowned firms than state-owned firms,and this positive impact is particularly significant for the non-state-owned firms with political connections with government.Thirdly,path analysis shows that the positive impact of regional integrity on CSR performance is validated by decreasing expenditure on rent-seeking and the self-interest tendencies of management.Fourthly,the anti-corruption campaign in 2012 effectively curbed the corruption of regional officials,enhancing their integrity awareness,thus effectively promoting CSR outcomes.Furthermore,the positive relationship between regional integrity and CSR remains significant after addressing potential endogeneity and using alternative integrity measures.The results remain robust after a series of robustness checks.This paper introduces a novel role of regional integrity in the firms’ CSR outcomes,showing that the anti-corruption campaign led by the central government has purified the harmful social atmosphere and has promoted anti-corruption construction,thus encouraging CSR performance.