社会责任信息披露与权益资本成本:财务透明度与治理环境的调节作用

Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure and the Cost of Equity Capital:The Roles of Corporate Financial Transparency and Outside Governance Environment

作为对财务信息的补充,企业社会责任报告中的环境、社会等非财务信息披露的经济后果成为近年来学术界和实务界关注的热点问题。本文以2009—2014年中国A股市场数据为样本,研究在不同外部治理环境与公司内部财务透明度下,社会责任信息披露对企业权益资本成本的影响。研究发现,披露社会责任报告能显著降低权益资本成本,且在公司外部治理环境较差、或公司内部财务透明度较低时两者才有显著负相关关系;对于披露社会责任报告的公司而言,无论治理环境与财务透明度如何,披露质量与权益资本成本间均无显著负相关关系。这表明披露社会责任报告对降低信息不对称的作用受公司与市场环境的共同影响,但由于当前我国企业社会责任报告披露质量并不高,这些报告释放的企业社会责任实践和责任危机应对情况的信息未能有效降低投资者对公司风险的评估。本文的研究结论丰富了社会责任报告披露经济后果方面的文献,同时对政策制定者进一步完善企业社会责任报告披露制度具有一定的参考价值。

As a supplement to financial information,economic consequences of non-financial information disclosed in CSR reports has become a hot issue in recent years. In this article,we take China＇s A-share market data in the period of 2009-2014 as the sample to study how CSR disclosure influence the cost of equity capital under the different situation of Chinese outside governance environment and corporate financial transparency. We found that CSR disclosure can significantly reduce the cost of equity capital only from a worse governance environment or a low financial transparency perspective and disclosure quality has no significant effect on the cost of equity capital,which suggests that market circumstance is as important as company information for company＇s decision making accordingly. However,right now CSR reports fail to reduce investors＇ assessment risk of corporations because of their low quality. This study furthers our understanding of CSR disclosure＇s consequences and sheds light on the importance of enhancing disclosure quality.