Exploring the Association between British Companies' CSR Performance and Financial Performance-Using the Information Content of CSR Reports as a Mediator

Abstract

This study investigates the relation between the CSR performance CSR report sentiments and firm’s financial performance and the mediating effect from CSR report sentiments CSR tends to improve firms’ reputation and obtain trust from investors and causes a positive impact on firms’ financial performance CSR reports is a way for investors to know the firms’ behaviors and the sentiments on it are informative which could affect the investors’ valuation of firms Based on the samples from UK listed firms for the period 2004-2018 our empirical results show that CSR performance has a positive impact on CSR report sentiments and market performance separately In addition the relation between CSR report sentiment and financial performance is positive Besides CSR report sentiments have a mediating effect on the relation between CSR performance and market performance The results imply that the CSR report sentiments is informative which may positively affect the investors’ perception of the firms’ market value which further results in better market performance

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Meng-Feng Yen (Supervisor)