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Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Responding to Investors’ Criticism on Social Media

Companies use corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures to communicate their social and environmental policies, practices, and performance to stakeholders. Although the determinants and outcomes of CSR activities are well understood, we know little about how companies use CSR communication t...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Zhang, Yuming, Yang, Fan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8305444/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34299847
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18147396
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author Zhang, Yuming
Yang, Fan
author_facet Zhang, Yuming
Yang, Fan
author_sort Zhang, Yuming
collection PubMed
description Companies use corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures to communicate their social and environmental policies, practices, and performance to stakeholders. Although the determinants and outcomes of CSR activities are well understood, we know little about how companies use CSR communication to manage a crisis. The few relevant CSR studies have focused on the pressure on corporations exerted by governments, customers, the media, or the public. Although investors have a significant influence on firm value, this stakeholder group has been neglected in research on CSR disclosure. Grounded in legitimacy theory and agency theory, this study uses a sample of Chinese public companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange to investigate CSR disclosure in response to social media criticism posted by investors. The empirical findings show that investors’ social media criticism not only motivates companies to disclose their CSR activities but also increases the substantiveness of their CSR reports, demonstrating that companies’ CSR communication in response to a crisis is substantive rather than merely symbolic. We also find that the impact of social media criticism on CSR disclosure is heterogeneous. Non-state-owned enterprises, companies in regions with high levels of environmental regulations, and companies in regions with local government concern about social issues are most likely to disclose CSR information and report substantive CSR activities. We provide an in-depth analysis of corporate CSR strategies for crisis management and show that crises initiated by investors on social media provide opportunities for corporations to improve their CSR engagement.
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spelling pubmed-83054442021-07-25 Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Responding to Investors’ Criticism on Social Media Zhang, Yuming Yang, Fan Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Companies use corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures to communicate their social and environmental policies, practices, and performance to stakeholders. Although the determinants and outcomes of CSR activities are well understood, we know little about how companies use CSR communication to manage a crisis. The few relevant CSR studies have focused on the pressure on corporations exerted by governments, customers, the media, or the public. Although investors have a significant influence on firm value, this stakeholder group has been neglected in research on CSR disclosure. Grounded in legitimacy theory and agency theory, this study uses a sample of Chinese public companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange to investigate CSR disclosure in response to social media criticism posted by investors. The empirical findings show that investors’ social media criticism not only motivates companies to disclose their CSR activities but also increases the substantiveness of their CSR reports, demonstrating that companies’ CSR communication in response to a crisis is substantive rather than merely symbolic. We also find that the impact of social media criticism on CSR disclosure is heterogeneous. Non-state-owned enterprises, companies in regions with high levels of environmental regulations, and companies in regions with local government concern about social issues are most likely to disclose CSR information and report substantive CSR activities. We provide an in-depth analysis of corporate CSR strategies for crisis management and show that crises initiated by investors on social media provide opportunities for corporations to improve their CSR engagement. MDPI 2021-07-11 /pmc/articles/PMC8305444/ /pubmed/34299847 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18147396 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Zhang, Yuming
Yang, Fan
Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Responding to Investors’ Criticism on Social Media
title Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Responding to Investors’ Criticism on Social Media
title_full Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Responding to Investors’ Criticism on Social Media
title_fullStr Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Responding to Investors’ Criticism on Social Media
title_full_unstemmed Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Responding to Investors’ Criticism on Social Media
title_short Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Responding to Investors’ Criticism on Social Media
title_sort corporate social responsibility disclosure: responding to investors’ criticism on social media
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8305444/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34299847
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18147396
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