Exploring the Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Financial Performance: The Moderating Role of Media Attention

Abstract

In the post-epidemic era, more and more enterprises have realized the crucial significance of corporate social responsibility for enterprise development. However, there is no consensus on the relationship between CSR and financial performance (FP). We collected data on listed companies in China from 2014 to 2020 in order to demonstrate whether CSR is positively or negatively correlated with financial performance and studied this relationship for the first time using media attention as a moderating variable. Through a regression analysis, we found that (1) companies with good CSR performance show a high level of FP; (2) the higher the media’s attention on the company, the better the CSR performance; and (3) based on the nature of the emotion, we divided media attention into positive and negative reports. Positive reports weaken the positive impact of CSR on financial performance, while negative reports reinforce this positive effect. These empirical findings remain robust after controlling for endogeneity and employing alternative variable measures. The results in this paper complement recent nexus modeling work and give a better understanding of the interaction mechanism in the CSR-FP nexus with useful implications for future enterprises’ sustainable development.