红色文化与民营企业参与乡村振兴

Red Culture and Private-owned Firms’Participation in Rural Revitalization

红色文化对我国经济社会的发展产生了重要影响,但其如何影响企业决策行为这一问题尚未得到较好的回答。基于民营企业参与乡村振兴国家战略的现实背景,本文以我国沪深两市A股民营上市公司为研究对象,首次系统地检验了红色文化对民营企业参与乡村振兴的影响。实证研究发现:①红色文化能够促进民营企业参与乡村振兴,在控制潜在内生性问题后,这一结论仍然成立;②民营企业家个人红色烙印能够增强红色文化对民营企业参与乡村振兴的促进作用。上述研究结果表明,全面实现乡村振兴离不开红色文化的继承与发扬,这对于如何有效推动民营企业家参与乡村振兴有着一定的政策启示。本文丰富了关于中国文化的研究积累,为中国情境下红色文化如何驱动企业社会责任履行提供了崭新的经验证据。

According to Williamson’s(2000)institutional analyses framework,informal institutions such as culture are located at the first level of all institutions in human society,which can have an impact on corporate behaviors at the lower level.In the context of China,prior literature has mainly focused on China’s traditional culture,examining the impact of a set of macro-level cultural factors,including Confucian culture,clan culture,etc.,on micro-level corporate behaviors.Red culture,as an informal institution formed in the transformation of modern China,has an extremely important impact on the development of China’s society and economy.However,it is far from understood that how red culture can exert its influence on corporate decision-making processes.The rural revitalization strategy is a highly innovative strategic deployment based on China’s special national conditions.Enterprises’participation plays a crucial role in achieving the goal of rural revitalization and has become a new form of fulfilling corporate social responsibility.But,up to now,there is little evidence shedding light on whether and how macro-level cultural factors affect enterprises’participation in the rural revitalization activities.As a response,this study aims to theoretically analyze and empirically test the impact of red culture on privately-owned enterprises’participation in the rural revitalization activities.Red culture has rich connotations.Back in the war years,the Old Revolution Base Areas(ORBAs)were often seen as the cradle of the birth of red culture.The ORBAs were roots of the Communist Party of China and its army and the historical witness of Chinese people choosing the Communist Party of China.Thus,red culture developed in the ORBAs naturally bears two major values,i.e.,“serve the people”and“collectivism”,which are always advocated by the Communist Party of China.We argue that privately-owned enterprises in the ORBAs are more likely to participate in the rural revitalization activities due to the influence of red culture.Beside that,we expect that entrepreneurs growing up in the ORBAs are more likely to unconsciously transform the rich revolutionary memories in their hometown into red imprints in their hearts,which helps improve their sense of identification with red culture,and then enhance the positive impact of red culture on privately-owned enterprises’participation in the rural revitalization activities.This study employs A-share privately-owned enterprises listed in the Shenzhen and Shanghai exchanges for the period of 2016-2019 as the initial sample.Then,after deleting firm-year observations in the finance and insurance industry,under special treatment status,and with missing data,we obtain the final sample including 8137 firm-year observations.We find that red culture can promote privately-owned enterprises’participation in the rural revitalization activities.This finding is still valid after controlling for the potential endogeneity issue.Moreover,the red imprints in entrepreneurs’hearts can strengthen the positive association between red culture and privately-owned enterprises’participation in the rural revitalization activities.Lastly,our further analyses reveal that the impact of red culture on privately-owned enterprises’participation in the rural revitalization activities is more pronounced for regions with more red resources and relatively low level of economic development.This study makes several contributions as below.First,from the perspective of red culture,this study contributes to the stream of literature on the impact of macro-level cultural factors on micro-level corporate behaviors.Second,this study also expands the research boundary of the determinants of privately-owned enterprises’participation in the rural revitalization activities.Lastly,we further investigate the moderating effects of entrepreneurs’personal traits,regional red resources,local economic development,which helps us better understand how red culture can exert its influence on privately-owned enterprises’participation in the rural revitalization activities.Future research can expand this study from the following two aspects.On the one hand,red culture is a kind of culture that constantly develops as time goes by.Although red culture is initially born in the war time,its connotations continue to be enriched in the peaceful time.In this regard,future research can further differentiate between different types and periods of red culture,and then examine the micro-level economic consequence of red culture in more detail.On the other hand,participating in the rural revitalization activities is only one aspect of corporate social responsibility.Thus,future research can further explore the impact of red culture on other aspects of corporate social responsibility,such as corporate environmental responsibility,philanthropy giving,product quality,employee safety,and so on.