Research On The Effect Of Financial Performance On Corporate Social Responsibility Information Disclosure

Chinese comprehensive strength has been increasing since the reform and opening-up policy implemented30years ago. Enterprises play an important role in it and they have become an important force in the national economic development. But in recent years, the "melamine milk powder incident","gutter oil","dyeing steamed bread" coupled with the recent "artificial shark’s fin" and other social events push enterprises to the forefront. Therefore, corporate social responsibility (CSR) began to enter into people’s horizons and attract people’s eyeballs, forcing the management and the staff of the enterprise to join in the practice of CSR. The development of the theory of CSR has a long history. The scholars at home and abroad have been dedicated in the study since the beginning of the20th century, though their points of view are different from one another. Researches on the relationship between financial performance and corporate social responsibility information (CSRI) disclosure have always been the hot spot of the theory and academic researches among them. What is more, it is also a new topic in this thesis. Making a study on it can adjust measures to local conditions to improve CSRI disclosure as a whole.The thesis selects all A-share listed companies in Chinese Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges in2012as the research objects and does research on the relationship between financial performance and CSRI disclosure from two aspects of theory and empirical research. What is more, according to the nature of the ownership of the company, all the samples are divided into two categories, state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises, to verify that the performance of enterprises of different nature has different influence on CSRI disclosure.This thesis is divided into five parts and the discussion is about the relationship between financial performance and CSRI disclosure. The first part is introduction, introducing the research background, research significance, research ideas, research methods and possible innovation place; the second part is the literature reviews combing literatures both at home and abroad about the concept of CSR, the development of corporate social performance (CSP) and its six kinds of evaluation methods and the relationship between corporate performance and CSRI disclosure; the third part is the theoretical analysis of the correlation between corporate performance and CSRI disclosure, analyzing the theoretical basis of the research in detail; the fourth part is the empirical analysis of the relationship between financial performance and CSRI disclosure, including hypothesis of the construction of the proposed model, selection of indicators, and the selection of sample data and the empirical analysis results; the fifth part introduces research conclusion, policy recommendations, the research limitations and prospects, and it summarizes the research’s conclusion, puts forward the corresponding policy recommendations on how to improve the social responsibility information disclosure in our country, points out the limitations during our research in this thesis and prospects of the future research.After the research, we find that there is a significant positive relationship between the financial performance and CSRI disclosure. Better-performing firms are more likely to issue CSR reports than worse-performing ones and if issuing CSR reports, better-performing firms have higher quality of CSR reports than worse performing ones. What is more, the performance of enterprises of different nature has different influence on CSRI disclosure. The results show that there is a weaker association between financial performance and probability of disclosing CSR information in SOEs than NSOEs and there is a weaker association between financial performance and quality of CSR reports in SOEs than in NSOEs.There are the following two possible innovations in this thesis. Firstly, after considering the background of the current system, according to the nature of the ownership of the company, all the samples are divided into two categories, state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises, to recognize the important role corporate ownership played in the validation of impact that financial performance have on CSR disclosure. Secondly, the thesis does not use the data of financial performance and CSRI disclosure in the same period in studying the relationship between them, but research on the influence of the early financial performance has on current CSR disclosure, so that it can be more persuasive to prove that better financial performance is the intrinsic motivation of managers to disclose CSRI.