企业社会责任与产品市场表现

《财经研究》 2022年48卷第2期 页码：109 - 122  online：2022年2月2日

企业社会责任与产品市场表现

Corporate Social Responsibility and Product Market Performance

作者（中）：蒋德权, 蓝梦

作者（英）：Jiang Dequan, Lan Meng

作者单位：1.上海财经大学 会计学院, 上海 200433

摘要：有关企业社会责任的经济后果，一直存在“股东价值假说”和“管理层自利假说”的争论。文章从产品市场角度对此进行了分析，发现企业积极履行社会责任能够提高产品市场表现，支持了“股东价值假说”。截面检验发现，这种价值效应在产业链下游的企业、信任水平较高地区的企业以及拥有政治关联的民营企业中更加显著。路径分析表明，企业履行社会责任通过改善与大客户和员工的关系以及外部监督环境，帮助其获得产品市场竞争优势。进一步研究发现，企业社会责任的价值效应具有跨期持续性，且不存在避税效应，排除了管理层机会主义行为的替代性解释。文章的研究对厘清企业社会责任的真实影响具有积极意义，也为政府倡导企业积极承担社会责任提供了依据。

关键词：企业社会责任; 产品市场绩效; 股东价值假说; 管理层自利假说

Summary: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important thrust for coordinating economic development, ecological civilization and social harmony, and also an important dimension for implementing the basic national policy of sustainable development strategy. However, there are two kinds of disputes about the economic consequences of CSR, namely, “shareholder value hypothesis” and “management self-interest hypothesis”. Relevant literature has tested disputes from the perspectives of financial performance, investment and financing behavior, and stakeholder evaluation, but has not reached a consensus, which inevitably causes enterprises to worry about the negative consequences of social responsibility, and also increases the difficulty of investor decision-making. The competitive advantage of product market plays a decisive role in the long-term development of enterprises, and is the base of the long-term value of enterprises. Compared with financial performance and the evaluation of securities investors, product market performance fully reflects the competitive advantage of enterprises, which can not only avoid the interference of non-operational factors and the dispute of index construction, but also avoid the interference of investors’ heterogeneous beliefs or expectations on enterprise behavior. Therefore, product market is an excellent perspective to investigate the real economic consequences of CSR.This paper takes A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2017 as the sample to explore the impact of CSR on product market performance. The result indicates that increasing the performance of CSR can improve product market performance. Specifically, compared with competitors, when CSR increases by 1%, the product market share increases by 2%, suggesting that CSR can help enterprises obtain the competitive advantage. This conclusion supports the “shareholder value hypothesis”. The cross-sectional test shows that the value effect of CSR appears more in the downstream enterprises of the industrial chain, enterprises in areas with high trust level, and private enterprises with political connections. Path analysis shows that performing more CSR can improve the relationship between enterprises and key customers and employees, and the external supervision environment, which helps enterprises obtain the competitive advantage of product market. Further research finds that the value effect of CSR has intertemporal persistence, and there is no tax avoidance effect, excluding the alternative explanation of management opportunism. Finally, to alleviate the endogenous problem, this paper takes the national poverty-stricken county as the event impact, which also shows that targeted poverty alleviation, a special type of social responsibility, can also improve the product market performance of enterprises.The contributions of this paper are mainly reflected in the following aspects: Firstly, it clarifies the basic impact of social responsibility on enterprises, and proves that increasing the performance of CSR can bring competitive advantages to enterprises. The conclusion provides a solid basis for relevant departments to promote enterprises to perform CSR, helps to eliminate enterprise concerns about the negative consequences of social responsibility, and helps stakeholders improve the quality of decision-making. Secondly, to some extent, it refutes the view of rent-seeking behavior on CSR. In the exclusion mechanism test part, there is no evidence of radical tax avoidance after enterprises undertake social responsibility, which shows that local governments have not relaxed their constraints and supervision, and refutes the view that CSR is a political contribution. It is a positive phenomenon for the relationship between government and enterprise in the period of transitional economy, which is conducive to removing the label of interest transfer between business and politics. Thirdly, from the perspective of product market, it complements the relevant research on CSR, and provides empirical evidence for the microeconomic consequences of poverty alleviation, which is of certain value to promote the relevant research on CSR.

Key words: CSR; product market performance; shareholder value hypothesis; management self-interest hypothesis

DOI：10.16538/j.cnki.jfe.20211113.102

收稿日期：2021-7-28

基金项目：国家自然科学基金重点项目（71632006）；国家自然科学基金面上项目（72072107）；高等学校学科创新引智计划（B18033）

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