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Contribution Details

Type Working Paper
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Information content of corporate social responsibility disclosures in Europe: An institutional perspective
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Stephanie Mittelbach-Hoermanseder
  • Katrin Hummel
  • Margarethe Rammerstorfer
Language
  • English
Institution University of Zurich
Series Name SSRN
Number 3365521
ISSN 1556-5068
Number of Pages 76
Date 2019
Abstract Text For a sample of STOXX Europe-600 constituents and a reporting period of nine years, we investigate the role of the institutional environment on the value relevance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures in firms’ annual reports. Using textual analysis, we construct topic-specific disclosures measures that examine the prevalence of CSR topics with respect to the EU CSR directive, namely environmental, social and employee matters, human rights, and anti-corruption and bribery. The results reveal the value relevance of CSR disclosures, although the sign depends on the regulatory setting; it is positive before the issuance of the CSR directive and negative after it. Furthermore our results indicate that the incremental value relevance of topic-specific CSR disclosure is affected by the institutional environment, specifically, it is negatively related to country-level CSR awareness as well as employee protection and positively related to both, the legal strength and the level of enforcement. Our results also vary depending by the underlying topics.
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Official URL https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3365521
Other Identification Number merlin-id:19044
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