Bringing religion back in: Religious entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial gender, and bank loans in Chinese family firms
ISSN: 1321-7348
Article publication date: 7 November 2019
Issue publication date: 15 November 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of religious entrepreneurs on bank loans and further examine the moderating effect of entrepreneurial gender.
Design/methodology/approach
In 2010, the Chinese national survey reported the different religious beliefs of private entrepreneurs. Using this set of survey data, the authors obtain a sample of 4,330 Chinese family firms and employ the Tobit regression approach to examine the relationship between the amount of bank loans and the religious background of entrepreneurs. In addition, the authors use the propensity score matching approach to address the endogeneity issue.
Findings
Based on the data from the 2010 national survey, the authors document that the amount of bank loans is significantly higher for Chinese family firms with religious entrepreneurs than for their counterparts. This finding suggests that religious individuals are inclined to be more ethical and honest and Chinese family firms with religious entrepreneurs transfer soft information to banks, and eventually lenders favor religious entrepreneurs with more bank loans. Moreover, the authors reveal that the amount of bank loans is significantly larger for firms with female entrepreneurs than for those without female entrepreneurs. In addition, entrepreneurial gender attenuates the positive relationship between religious entrepreneurs and bank loans.
Originality/value
This study is one of few studies to examine the influence of an entrepreneur’s religious belief on bank credit decisions and adds to previous studies about religious influence on corporate behavior by revealing a positive association between religious entrepreneurs and bank loans. Moreover, this study validates that female entrepreneurs exert positive effects on the amount of bank loans and attenuate the positive influence of religious entrepreneurs on bank loans.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Haiyan Zhou (Editor), Wenxia Ge (Associate Editor), two anonymous reviewers and Prof. Lu Deng for his generous providing the original survey data. The authors also appreciate constructive comments and valuable suggestions from participants of the presentations (On Informal Systems: China’s Realities and Research Opportunities) at Xiamen University, Anhui University, Shandong University, and Shanghai University. This study is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (The approval number: NSFC-71790602; NSFC-71572162; NSFC-71702158) and the Key Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Science in Ministry of Education (the approval number: 16JJD790032).
Citation
Du, X. and Zeng, Q. (2019), "Bringing religion back in: Religious entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial gender, and bank loans in Chinese family firms", Asian Review of Accounting, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 508-545. https://doi.org/10.1108/ARA-04-2018-0097
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited