Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure, Media Reports, and Enterprise Innovation: Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

Shilei Wu, Hongjie Zhang and Taoyuan Wei ()
Additional contact information
Shilei Wu: School of Economics, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255000, China
Hongjie Zhang: School of Economics, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255000, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 15, 1-17

Abstract: Given the limited response of enterprises to China’s national policy on the compulsory disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR), a deviation has occurred between policy orientation and reality. To explore the reasons behind this deviation, we investigated whether different types of media reports play an intermediary role in the process of CSR affecting corporate innovation based on the data of the companies listed on China’s Shenzhen Stock Exchange and Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2019. The results show that the disclosure of CSR by the listed companies can significantly promote corporate innovation, which provides theoretical support for the national compulsory disclosure of CSR. Newspaper media reports and online media reports not only directly promote corporate innovation but also form a positive mediation path in the CSR disclosure and the promotion of corporate innovation. Further analysis shows that, among the five aspects of CSR, the disclosure of employee responsibility had the greatest effect on the corporate innovation, whereas the disclosure of social contribution responsibility only had a short-term inhibitory effect. Both newspaper media and online media reports on CSR disclosure were beneficial to corporate innovation. Positive and neutral reports may play the role of media governance to promote corporate innovation, whereas negative reports can restrain corporate innovation due to the market pressure effect produced by them, which also provides the basis for media supervision by the state.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility (CSR); media coverage; listed company; enterprise innovation; intermediary role (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8466/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8466/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:15:p:8466-:d:603889

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().