El Ghoul, Guedhami, Nash, and Patel on the Role of the Media in Corporate Social Responsibility

Sadok El Ghoul, University of Alberta, Campus Saint-Jean, Omrane Guedhami, University of South Carolina, Moore School of Business, Robert C. Nash, Wake Forest University, and Ajay Patel, Wake Forest University, School of Business, have published New Evidence on the Role of the Media in Corporate Social Responsibility. Here is the abstract.

Prior research suggests that the media plays an important information intermediary role in capital markets. We investigate the role of the media in influencing firms’ engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Using a large sample of 4,453 unique firms from 53 countries over the period 2003 to 2012, we find strong evidence that firms engage in more CSR activities if located in countries where the media has more freedom. This relation is robust to using various proxies for media freedom and an alternative source of CSR data. In additional analyses, we find that the positive relation between media freedom and CSR engagement is stronger for better governed firms and for larger firms. Since the media have the ability to impact reputational capital, we conclude that media freedom affects firms’ incentives to engage in costly CSR activities.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.