The Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility on Productivity: Firm-Level Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

Abstract

The recent promotion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by China has coincided with a marked increase in the number of its listed firms. To what extent can the disclosure of CSR reports benefit corporate productivity? This article empirically explores the impact of CSR on firm-level Total Factor Productivity (TFP) as well as the possible influence approaches and mechanisms. Following previous literature, several predictive models are built to draw the following conclusions: (1) CSR significantly promotes TFP; (2) the impact of CSR on TFP of family firms is greater than that of non-family firms; (3) CSR has a larger positive impact on firms releasing CSR reports voluntarily than on those releasing under compulsion; (4) CSR has a greater impact on private firms than on state-owned ones, while it has little effect on foreign-funded ones; (5) The impact of CSR on TFP is robust in high-tech firms, non-high-tech firms, coastal firms, non-coastal firms, industrial firms, and service firms. Besides, this article finds that financing constraints operate as a major channel for CSR to affect TFP, while firms’ irregularity acts only as an important channel. Additionally, 2SLS method is employed to deal with possible endogenous problems, finding that our conclusions remain robust.