The Study Of The Effects Of The Media Attention On The Corporate Social Responsibility

Since entering the new century, China’s economic development has achieved unprecedented success. Residents’ living standards and GDP have shown a steady growth trend. But it has brought many problems behind the rapid economic development:tainted milk powder incident, stained bread events, liquor plasticizer, Dalian oil tube explosion, Zijin mining contamination scandal etc., it can clearly be seen that the phenomenon of enterprises disregarding the social responsibility still exists in our country. At present, our country is in economic transition period, the market system is not sound, the traditional laws and regulations are difficult to effectively governance and improve the situation. So, seeking the outer legal system of governance has become an inevitable trend. Nowadays, the media can not only deliver the News & Contents, but also supervise the behavior of enterprises, improve corporate governance environment, improve the capital markets, and play a governance role. So, could media attentions exert the function of governance on the phenomenon of lack of corporate social responsibility? If there is, how media attentions exert the function of governance? Is there any difference of governance effect on corporate social responsibility in different content (negative reports and non-negative reports) media reports or different type (policy-oriented newspaper and market-oriented newspaper) media reports? This paper will study the above issues.Firstly, this paper reviews literature related to the issues in this paper, and makes an analysis and summary. Then, this paper deduces two mechanisms of governance function of the media:the reputation mechanism and the information dissemination mechanism, concludes the two ways of the effect of media attention towards corporate social responsibility:enterprises’ reputation and administration’s intervention, and puts forward three assumptions on the basis of the stakeholder theory, corporate reputation theory and signaling theory. In empirical research, this paper uses 2009-2013 Shenzhen and Shanghai A-share food listed companies as study samples, selects the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s "social contribution per share" as a measure of corporate social responsibility, constructs multiple linear regression model, empirically studies the impact of media attention towards corporate social responsibility, and test the existence of differences of governance effect on corporate social responsibility in different intonation or different type media reports. Results of this study demonstrate that media attention has a significant positive influence on corporate social responsibility, and the differences of the degree of influence does exist in different content media reports or different type media reports. Specifically speaking:(1) The more the media reports, the higher the media attention, the more corporate social responsibility enterprises undertake; (2) As to the non-negative media reports, the positive impact of the negative media reports towards corporate social responsibility is more significant; (3) As to the market-oriented newspaper reports, the positive impact of the policy-oriented newspaper reports towards corporate social responsibility is more significant. At last, this paper summarizes research conclusion, puts forward relevant policies and recommendations, and points out the limitations of this study and future research directions.