Corporate social responsibility in times of social distancing: Evidence from China

Md Jahidur Rahman, Qi Wu and Hongtao Zhu

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, 2025, vol. 34, issue 2, 309-327

Abstract: This study investigates whether and how the intensity of social distancing from the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic influences the corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure index. An empirical examination is carried out based on data from the Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2020 to 2022. CSR disclosure index is measured by the percentage of CSR‐related press releases from the total press releases published on a certain day. The intensity of the COVID‐19 pandemic is measured by the daily confirmed cases among the population in China. This research uses the two‐stage least squares regression model to alleviate the endogeneity issues. Findings reveal a reverse correlation between the intensity of the COVID‐19 pandemic and the CSR disclosure. The results are consistent and robust to endogeneity tests and sensitivity analyses. Findings support the stakeholder–agency theory and indicate that Chinese managers tend to satisfy the shareholders' interests rather than those of other broad stakeholders. Moreover, Chinese managers tend to choose short‐term survival rather than long‐term development in times of social distancing.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12651

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:wly:buseth:v:34:y:2025:i:2:p:309-327

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().