Empirical Research On The Relationship Between Social Responsibility Performance,Operating Risk And Cost Of Equity Capital

With the vigorous development of national market economy,people's material living standard has been steadily improved,but the accompanying negative effects are also very significant.Crisis events caused by the lack of corporate social responsibility occur frequently,which have a negative impact on the progress of society and the long-term development of enterprises.Therefore,all people of society and supervision departments require enterprises to undertake social responsibility,and the economic consequences of corporate social responsibility have also become the focus of academic research.The thesis focuses on the impact of corporate social responsibility on the cost of equity capital,that is,whether corporate social responsibility can attract more investors to obtain financing advantages.Considering operating risk is the core influencing factor of equity capital cost,the thesis studies the internal mechanism of social responsibility performance on the cost of equity capital from the perspective of operating risk.Under the guidance of stakeholder theory,resource-based theory and principal-agent theory,the thesis makes a theoretical analysis of the logical relationship between social responsibility performance,operating risk and cost of equity capital from the two opposing viewpoints of social responsibility superiority viewpoint and social responsibility inferiority viewpoint.Then the thesis puts forward three research hypotheses,selects 2014 to 2017 as research period,takes Shenzhen and Shanghai A-share listed companies as samples,uses the total social responsibility scores released by Hexun to measure social responsibility performance,uses annual data of stock daily return volatility to measure operating risk,uses the PEG model to measure cost of equity capital,and constructs three models under the control of major influencing factors such as asset-liability ratio,book-to-market ratio,profitability,stock liquidity,ownership concentration and enterprise scale.Finally,the thesis uses SPSS software to empirically analyze the impact of social responsibility performance on the cost of equity capital,the impact of social responsibility performance on operating risk,and whether operating risk has the mediating effect in the relationship between social responsibility performance and the cost of equity capital.In addition,three models are tested for robustness to enhance the reliability of research conclusions.The main conclusions of the thesis are as follows: social responsibility performance is significantly negative correlation with cost of equity capital;social responsibility performance is significantly negative correlation with operating risk;operating risk plays a part of the intermediary role in the relationship between social responsibility performance and cost of equity capital,that is,enterprises can reduce the risk compensation required by investors by reducing operating risk,thereby reducing the cost of equity capital.The research of the thesis further exposes the internal mechanism of social responsibility performance on the cost of equity capital,promotes enterprises to actively undertake social responsibility,and provides a new perspective for enterprises to improve the financing environment.