慈善捐赠、管理者乐观预期与企业过度投资——基于动态认知偏差视角

Corporate philanthropy,managers optimism and overinvestment:Based on top managers’psychological biases

企业慈善捐赠虽然改善了社会整体福利,也能为企业带来多重经济利益,但是其对管理决策所产生的心理效应却常常被忽略。本文采用2009-2019年民营上市公司数据,实证检验了企业慈善捐赠通过扰动管理者心理预期最终影响投资行为的过程。研究发现,慈善捐赠水平较高的企业也更容易过度投资,并且,基于动态认知偏差理论,我们发现管理者过度乐观的认知偏差在慈善捐赠与过度投资之间起到了中介作用,上述关系在经过一系列稳健性检验之后依然成立。在进一步分析中我们发现,上述乐观预期不仅体现在企业投资领域,慈善捐赠较多的公司在研发创新以及市场拓展等方面也更加激进。研究结论拓展了企业慈善捐赠后续效应的相关研究视阈,同时也为企业过度投资的产生机理提供了新的路径解释。

Although it has been evidenced that corporate donation as a strategic choice can bring a variety of benefits to firms,the related psychological effect has been ignored to a considerable extent.Since the irrational factors have been introduced into economics,the cognitive bias of management has attracted widespread attention.Earlier studies tended to regard cognitive biases as static traits,with managers′cognitive biases being associated with their inherent characteristics(e.g.,gender,age,education).In recent studies,scholars have introduced dynamic cognitive biases into the analytical framework.This kind of research believes that human cognitive biases are dynamic.Cognitive biases are not only rooted in static characteristics,but are also influenced by specific issues.Based on the perspective of dynamic cognitive bias,using the data of private listed companies in China from 2009 to 2019,we explored the impact of corporate charitable donations on investment decisions.It was found that charitable donations led to corporate overinvestment,and managers′psychological biases played a mediating role in this process.In China′s economic and cultural context,corporate donation is not only an“altruistic”act,but also implies potential benefits.Strategic charitable giving can be better understood only when it is incorporated into the framework of“giving-benefit”.We believe that under the“giving-benefit”mechanism,donations will produce“lottery effect”and“fog effect”,which leads to excessive optimism of corporate management.On the one hand,from the perspective of the“lottery effect”,donations could bring great public reputation to the company in the mobile Internet environment,which means huge economic benefits.Executives may overestimate this effect of giving.Furthermore,the existing research shows that corporate donation can bring valuable legitimate assets to businesses,which is particularly critical for businesses in emerging markets.On the other hand,from the perspective of the“fog effect”,the process of obtaining public reputation and organizational legitimacy through charitable donation is relatively vague,and the relationship between income and investment is relatively indirect,which further expedites the cognitive biases of senior executives and leads to excessive optimism.On the basis of optimistic expectations,on the other hand,existing studies also believe that overly optimistic executives are more likely to overinvest.To sum up,charitable giving ultimately leads to overinvestment.In the empirical section,firstly,we employed Richardson(2006)model to measure the possibility and degree of overinvestment.Secondly,based on the model of Baron&Kenny(1986),we examined the relationship between corporation donation,managers’optimism and overinvestment,and the results supported the hypothesis in theory section.Further,we conducted a number of robust tests.First,the logic that charitable donations ultimately affect investment decisions could be affected by the slack of resources.Companies with higher levels of resources slack may invest more in both donation and investment.For this reason,we conducted a resource-poor test and found that our hypothesis was still tenable;second,to alleviate possible endogeneity problems,we conducted a PSM test,and the results showed that our conclusion remained.Finally,alternative measurement of variable could be a protentional threat to our conclusion,and the results of robust tests still supported our conclusion.Overall,the results indicate that corporate giving as a tool to fulfill corporate philanthropy strategy can have psychological effect on the efficiency of investment through top managers’psychological biases.In the section of further analysis,we found that the psychological biases of senior executives do not only affect decisions on investment,but also is expected to have an impact on corporate R&D strategy and marketing strategy.Empirical tests show that firms with more donation tend to spend more on R&D and marketing,and the psychological biases of managers also play an intermediary role.This study hopes to shed a new light on the literature of corporate donation and provide new evidence on the antecedents of corporate overinvestment.The conclusions of this paper add to the understanding of existing research on the impact of strategic charitable donation.Previous studies have focused on discussing the impact of charitable donation on the ability of enterprises to obtain external resources,relatively ignoring the impact of charitable donation on enterprises themselves from the internal perspective,and even ignoring the psychological effect that may be brought to enterprises.Our research conclusions show that charitable donations not only have resource effects,but also psychological effects.The rationality of corporate managers will be disturbed by this strategy,which will then affect corporate operations and strategic decisions.