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This study aims to provide further insights into the connection between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and companies’ credit ratings, while also exploring the role of corporate governance as a moderating factor. The hypotheses for this relationship are rooted in both legitimacy and stakeholder theories.

Using a sample of French non-financial listed firms from 2007 to 2020, this paper uses the ordered probit model introduced by Greene (2000). The issue of endogeneity has also been addressed.

The study reveals that CSR practices positively impact companies’ credit ratings by enhancing solvency and financial performance. Specifically, firms that prioritize CSR, particularly in the social and environmental dimensions (such as community relations, diversity, employee relations, environmental performance and product characteristics), tend to have higher credit ratings and a reduced risk of default. This suggests that credit rating agencies likely incorporate CSR performance when assigning credit ratings. Furthermore, the quality of corporate governance acts as a moderator, strengthening the relationship between CSR and credit ratings. The findings remain robust even after accounting for key firm attributes and addressing potential endogeneity between CSR and credit ratings.

This research provides valuable guidance for policymakers, corporate managers, investors and other stakeholders, as it offers insights into the influence of CSR activities on risk premiums and financing costs. For financial institutions, expanding credit decisions to encompass non-financial factors such as CSR can result in more accurate predictions of firm credit quality compared to relying solely on financial indicators.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study stands out as the first to systematically examine the relationship between CSR and credit ratings within the French context. Moreover, it distinguishes itself by investigating the moderating influence of corporate governance on this relationship, setting it apart from prior research.

This study aims to examine the potential threshold effect in the association between corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and social reputation.

This study includes an international and cross-sector sample covering 41 countries, nine sectors and 45,395 firm-year observations. It applies a parabolic relationship, rather than linear regressions, between CSR engagement and social reputation via CSR awarding. This implies that CSR performance should increase until a certain point to gain a social reputation but then should decrease after reaching that threshold point considering limited financial resources.

The findings of country-industry-year fixed-effects logistic regressions confirm the threshold effect with an inverted U-shaped relationship between CSR and CSR awarding. More specifically, firms increase their environmental and social engagement until a certain point, and then they reduce it after reaching a social reputation. This finding is confirmed by three dimensions of the environmental pillar (i.e. resource use, emissions and eco-innovation) as well as four dimensions of the social pillar (i.e. workforce, human rights, community and product responsibility). The findings are robust to alternative samples, alternative methodology and endogeneity concerns.

The findings of this study have implications for firms about the better allocation of available funds between CSR and operations. The findings could be particularly useful for CSR teams/committees of the firms who formulate CSR policies and how to mobilize firm resources for better social enhancement via environmental and social reputation.

This study examines deeper the nature of the association between CSR engagement and social reputation and considers the possibility of an inverted U-shaped relationship between them. The determination of a threshold effect suggests that CSR engagement increases social reputation, but once it reaches a certain point, social reputation will decrease owing to financial resource constraints.

This study investigates the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance of the banking sector from the prospective of emerging countries.

This study obtained balance sheet and income statement data for 173 banks in 20 emerging countries from the Bankscope database from 2005–2018. The CSR-related data were taken from the Thomson Reuters ASSET4 database. Moreover, macroeconomic controls such as GDP per capita, inflation, and financial development are attained from the GFDD. The series of institutional quality indices (Political Stability, Rule of Law, Control of Corruption, Government Effectiveness, and Regulatory Quality) is obtained from the WGI. At the same time, national culture and bank regulation are attained from Hofstede Insights and Barth et al. (2013). We used the panel fixed-effects model in our baseline estimations, while 2SLS and GMM were applied to control for endogeneity.

The finding shows that CSR activities significantly improve bank performance, but the effect varies across the bank. Only environmentally friendly activities have shown a significant positive relationship with banking performance for CSR dimensions. However, the social and government dimensions did not significantly affect bank performance. Moreover, a sound institutional and regulatory environment and national norms play an important role in the nexus of CSR activities and bank performance.

This study provides empirical evidence that sheds light on CSR and bank performance in an emerging market context.

Prior studies mostly tested the association between carbon emissions and firm value in certain contexts. This study aims to advance the existing literature by concentrating on three indicators of greening in corporations namely resource use, emissions and eco-innovation, and examining their value relevance in the stock market at the global level. Furthermore, we deepen the investigation by exploring the moderating role of eco-innovation and the CSR committee between greening in corporations and market value.

The data for the study were retrieved from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database for the years between 2002 and 2019 and contain 17,961 firm-year observations which are analyzed through fixed-effects regression.

The results reveal that while resource usage is viewed as value-relevant by the market, the emissions and eco-innovation are not. However, despite eco-innovation per se not being value-relevant, its interaction with resource usage and emissions is value-relevant. Furthermore, CSR committees undertake a very critical role in translating greening practices into market value.

While the results for emissions support the cost-concerned school, the findings for resource usage confirm the value creation school. Furthermore, the interaction effect of eco-innovation and CSR committee confirms the resource-based theory and stakeholder theory, respectively.

Investors regard eco-innovation-induced pro-environmental behaviors as value-relevant. These results propose firms replace eco-innovation at the focal point in developing environmental strategies and connecting other greening efforts to it. Moreover, CSR committees are critical to corporations in translating greening practices into firm value by developing and implementing disclosure and communication strategies.

The study’s originality stems from investigating the synergetic effect that eco-innovation and CSR committees generate in translating greening practices to greater market value at a global scale.

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a crisis that has hit the European economy and the currently existing systems. To cope with the crisis, Europe has started an investment aiming the energy transition and crisis. Portugal, Spain and Greece have received the approval of their National Recovery Plans from the European Commission, with a definition of spending up to 2026 through the European Union (EU) Next Generation Found. The study investigates whether the Green Deal policies are relaunched by the plans financed and whether the pandemic has changed and conditioned the priorities of the energy transaction. The study uses the lens of corporate social responsability (CSR) and relapse measurable across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Green Deal policies supported by new European investments in the three countries were analyzed through a content analysis (CA) technique to investigate the associated practical and theoretical elements.

The energy theme has a relevance compared to other issues in the investment plans envisaged in Greece, Portugal and Spain. The analysis highlights energy efficiency, sustainable energy and reduction of consumption among the main themes. Energetically, sustainable building plays a central role. The study highlights the relationship between Green Deal policies, CSR, SDGs and management tools adopted.

The study strengthens the relationship between the Green Deal, CSR and SDGs by identifying policies that have already been implemented and theoretical and practical gaps on which politicians and scholars will have to investigate and support in the process of development and continuity of the identified pillars.

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure has gained momentum in corporate reporting. Addressing a research gap on the subject, this paper aims to explore the theories involved in ESG disclosure studies, thereby shedding light on the dominant theoretical approaches and emerging perspectives that inform this type of disclosure.

A systematic review of 142 selected accounting studies published up to June 2023 devoted to ESG – and corporate social responsibility (CSR) – disclosure was conducted. The theories underlying these studies were examined through a descriptive performance analysis complemented by a systematic qualitative text analysis using RStudio and QDA Miner software tools.

The study reveals that five dominant theories stand out among the overall 32 found: stakeholder theory first, followed by legitimacy, institutional, agency and signaling theories. Theories are often combined into an integrated theoretical framework. The findings also show an array of minor constructs – many of them unconventional – that offer fresh perspectives for studying ESG disclosure, such as upper echelons, stakeholder salience, cognitive cost and reputation theories, among others.

This paper provides an original literature contribution by offering a comprehensive overview of the mainstream and niche theoretical perspectives underpinning accounting studies focused on ESG disclosure, with a nuanced scope of discussion on the use of ESG/CSR terms.

This paper examines how firms respond to local government’s environment initiatives through textual analysis of government work reports (GWRs). This study aims to provide insights into how firms strategically respond to government’s environmental initiatives through their disclosure and investment practices.

This study uses a textual analysis of GWRs from China’s provinces. The frequency and change rate of environmental keywords in these reports are used as a measure of the government’s environmental initiatives.

This study finds that environmental disclosure scores in environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports increase with the frequency or change rate of environmental keywords in provincial GWRs. This effect is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises, firms in highly marketized provinces or those listed in a single capital market. However, there is no significant relationship between firms’ environmental investments and government initiatives, except for cross-listed firms in provinces with consistently high frequency of environmental keywords in their GWRs.

The findings indicate that government environmental initiatives can shape firms’ disclosure behaviors, yet have limited influence on investment decisions, suggesting that environmental disclosure could potentially be opportunistic. This underscores the need for more effective strategies to stimulate firms’ environmental investments.

This study provides valuable insights into the differential impacts of government environmental initiatives on firms’ disclosure and investment behaviors, contributing to the understanding of corporate environmental responsibility in the context of government initiatives.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of sustainable board governance, based on (1) sustainability board committees, (2) critical mass of female board members and (3) sustainability-related executive compensation, on sustainable supply chain reporting (SSCR).

Based on stakeholder and critical mass theories, a sample of 1,577 firm-year observations for firms listed at the EuroSTOXX600 for the period 2017–2021 is used. Sustainable board governance and SSCR proxies are collected from the Refinitiv database. Correlation and logit regression analyses are conducted to measure the impact of sustainable board governance on SSCR.

Sustainable board governance significantly improves SSCR. The findings are robust to various robustness checks, based on the modification of dependent and independent variables.

Due to massive regulations on sustainability reporting, finance and corporate governance, firms listed on the EuroSTOXX 600 are focused in this analysis. The European capital market represents a unique setting for archival research.

European standard setters should connect the relationship between sustainable board governance and SSCR in future regulations, for example, due to the recent corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD) and corporate sustainability due diligence directive (CSDDD).

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper provides the first analysis on the impact of sustainable board governance on SSCR.

This study aims to explain why low social conduct in corporate social responsibility (SC-CSR), especially employee exploitation, has a stronger negative impact on consumer reactions for service firms than for manufacturing firms.

Five experiments compared consumer reactions to service and manufacturing firms with low SC-CSR. Study 1 used a choice-based conjoint design to examine the relative importance of various shared attributes when consumers chose services versus goods. Study 2 revealed that low SC-CSR led to more pronounced negative consumers reactions toward service firms. Studies 3A and 3B explained this difference through a serial mediation analysis. Study 4 ruled out an alternative explanation regarding the differentiated effects.

The results reveal that consumer reactions to employee exploitation in service firms are more negative compared to manufacturing firms. This is because consumers’ sense of presence (i.e. feeling of being there) is stronger in a service setting, leading to more intense empathetic emotions toward service employees.

This research contributes to the CSR literature by challenging the conventional notion that sweatshops are more problematic for manufacturing firms. By contrast, the results indicate a stronger negative effect on service firms. It contributes to the services marketing literature by conceptualizing a novel cognitive mechanism. Traditionally, consumers’ negative reactions are driven by anger. However, the authors show that empathetic feelings toward mistreated employees play a predominant role. While it is imperative for all firms to ensure fair treatment of their employees, the findings underscore the heightened significance of this aspect for service firms, given their susceptibility to more pronounced negative effects.

The aim of this paper is to understand the importance of consumer loyalty in the specific context of Hotel Family Business. This study proposes a conceptual model to examine how perceived service quality and corporate social responsibility (SCR) influence guest satisfaction and loyalty, and also how they relate to corporate image, perceived value and price.

Through the structural equation model (SEM), a research model was proposed to examine SQ and CSR affect satisfaction and loyalty to the Douro Family Hotel and also, how they interact with corporate image, perceived value and price. The main purpose is to analyse the drivers of guest loyalty and its importance for the development and sustainability of family hotels in Douro (Portugal).

The results of the study indicate that CSR and SQ perceived by the guest have a direct and positive effect on guest satisfaction and loyalty to Douro family hotels. These variables are also determinants of the perceived value, corporate image and price.

The sample is restricted and obtained by the convenience technique, but with sufficient size for the application of the structural equations model. However, the results obtained cannot be generalised to all hotels or contexts, as they only reflect information on family hotels in the Douro.

Family businesses are a substantial share of the European economy, from the industrial sector to the services industry, including also hospitality. In Portugal, family businesses likewise play a key role, both in terms of wealth creation and job creation.

These findings provide knowledge to family hotels on how they should implement a CSR policy that promotes service quality, corporate image and guest satisfaction, and therefore their loyalty and the competitiveness of the family hotel business.