 How can regulators affect corporate social responsibility? Evidence from regulatory disclosures of consumer complaints in the U.SYujie Wang, Albert Tsang, Yi Xiang and Shuo Yan The British Accounting Review, 2024, vol. 56, issue 1 Abstract: Regulators are increasingly seeking ways to incentivize firms to improve corporate social responsibility (CSR) while minimizing criticism of direct interventions in firm behavior. This study takes advantage of two exogenous regulatory shocks initiated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in the US. In 2011, the CFPB enabled the private filing of consumer complaints against financial firms, and in 2013, these complaints were publicly disclosed. Our findings reveal a positive association between consumer complaints and subsequent CSR performance of the targeted financial firms (referred to as focal firms). Notably, this association becomes significant only after the public disclosure of complaints. Furthermore, we observe a spillover effect on the CSR performance of non-focal firms operating in the same area as the focal firms. Collectively, these findings suggest that mandatory disclosure of consumer complaints is one effective regulatory strategy to motivate both focal and non-focal firms to enhance their CSR performance. Keywords: Consumer complaints; Disclosure; CSR; Consumer protection (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:bracre:v:56:y:2024:i:1:s0890838923001373 DOI: 10.1016/j.bar.2023.101280 Access Statistics for this article The British Accounting Review is currently edited by Nathan Lael Joseph and Alan Lowe More articles in The British Accounting Review from Elsevier |
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