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The Effect Of Corporate Visibility On Corporate Social Responsibility, Zhichuan Li, Taylor Morris, Brian Young

Business Publications

Outside of direct ownership, the general public may feel it is an implicit stakeholder of a firm. As the public becomes more vested in a firm’s actions, the firm may be more likely to engage in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. We proxy for the public’s stake in a firm with public visibility. Based on 3,400 unique newspaper publications from 1994 to 2008, we measure visibility for the U.S. S&P 500 firms with the frequency of print articles per year concerning the firm. We find that visibility has a signficant, positive relationship with the CSR rating. Evidence also suggests this …