Research On The Influence Of Charitable Donations On Trade Credit In Enterprise Supply Chain

With the intensification of enterprise competition and the complexity of economic activities,enterprises strengthen cooperation and communication with upstream suppliers and downstream customers to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results,and form a good supply chain alliance.At present,some Chinese enterprises are in financing difficulties due to the difficulty in obtaining bank loans,which further affects the smooth supply chain.Especially affected by the COVID-19 epidemic,the reality is not optimistic.As an alternative financing method of bank credit,trade credit is essentially the financing given to enterprises by upstream suppliers and downstream customers based on credit,which can effectively alleviate financing constraints.Therefore,improving the enterprise credit is not only beneficial to enterprise financing,but also beneficial to the sustainable development of the supply chain.To this end,the state strengthens the social credit system from the legal and institutional level,and promotes the new supervision mechanism based on credit to improve enterprise credit.Nowadays,corporate social responsibility and strategic management are closely integrated.Enterprises hope to actively undertake social responsibility to improve their credit for more financing.More than 90% of the companies have different degrees of charitable giving.As the highest manifestation of corporate social responsibility,does charitable donation have an impact on enterprise trade credit? This paper mainly explores the influence of charitable donation on trade credit in enterprise supply chain,as well as the influence of information transparency,agency conflict between managements and shareholders,motivation of corporate charitable donation,agency conflict between major shareholders and minor shareholders on the relationship between them.Upstream suppliers,enterprises and downstream customers constitute the whole supply chain.Trade credit refers to the delay in payment when an enterprise purchases products from suppliers,which takes up suppliers’ funds.Trade credit also refers to the delayed collection of funds when an enterprise sells products to customers,which provides customers with funds.Distinctly,trade credit is the enterprise of supply and demand equilibrium under the joint action.In the whole supply chain,enterprises are not only the customers of suppliers,but also the suppliers of customers.Suppliers and customers are stakeholders of enterprises,and their trade credit support for enterprises is competitive resources.Therefore,enterprises adopt the net value of deferred payment funds and deferred payment funds,namely net trade credit to measure the amount of trade credit financing an enterprise obtains from the supply chain.This paper focuses on the following three aspects.Firstly,using the signal transmission theory and reputation theory to analyze the impact of corporate charitable donations on trade credit from the perspective of the supply chain.Secondly,it analyzes the influence of information transparency on charitable donation and trade credit in enterprise supply chain by combining information asymmetry theory.Finally,based on the principal-agent theory,the paper analyzes the impact of agency conflicts between management and shareholders,corporate philanthropic donation motivation,and agency conflicts between major shareholders and minor shareholders on philanthropic donation and trade credit respectively,and takes the data of A-share listed companies in Shenzhen and Shanghai from 2006 to 2018 as research samples to conduct empirical tests on the above issues.Through the combination of normative analysis and empirical analysis,the following conclusions are drawn.（1）There is a significant positive correlation between corporate charitable donations and net trade credit,indicating that corporate charitable donation has the function of signal transmission and reputation improvement.（2）When the corporate information transparency is low,the positive relationship between corporate charitable donations and net trade credit in the supply chain is more significant,indicating that charitable donations can reduce the information asymmetry between enterprises and key stakeholders.（3）When the agency conflict between corporate managements and shareholders is serious,the positive relationship between corporate charitable donation and net trade credit is more significant.（4）An econometric model was constructed to distinguish between strategic and self-interested charitable donations,and it finds that charitable donations in the supply chain helps enterprises to obtain net trade credit based on the self-interested motivation of management.（5）When the agency conflict between major shareholders and minority shareholders is serious,the positive relationship between corporate charitable donations and net trade credit is more significant.The research of this paper extends the research on the intersection of charity donations and trade credit in enterprise supply chain,and provides some reference for the government and enterprises.（1）The government should strengthen the supervision of corporate charitable donations,strengthen the supervision mechanism,improve relevant policies,improve the social and economic effects of corporate charitable donations,and promote the sustainable development of corporate supply chain.（2）Enterprises should dialectically treat charity donation’s economic effect in the supply chain.When making the donation decision,enterprises should fully consider the operation status and financial ability,reasonably arrange the field of corporate donations,corporate donation’s scale and time,so as to achieve a win-win situation of social responsibility and trade credit.（3）Enterprises should strengthen the supervision of the philanthropic donation’s process,reasonably restrain and motivate the management,strengthen the internal governance mechanism of the company,reduce information asymmetry and build a good internal environment of the company.