Recent research finds that affective reactions elicited from exposure to Sustainability reports unintentionally influence investors' decisions and that this bias is mitigated through explicit assessment of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) performance. An unexplored implication is whether this bias can also affect lenders' decisions, where this bias may have serious unintended consequences on the efficient allocation of credit. While investing decisions' main concern relies on stock return maximization, the borrower's ability to pay back the debt is central in lending decisions and may help lenders to compensate for information asymmetry and assess creditworthiness. Using an experimental method, we find that CSR performance reports do elicit affective reactions but, contrary to the case of investing, they do not provoke unintended effects on credit judgments and lending decisions. Our findings suggest that lenders are likely to attribute their CSR affects to its source and use CSR performance as a proxy for borrowers' integrity.

中文翻译：

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对可持续性绩效的情感反应是否会无意中影响贷款决策？

最近的研究发现，因接触可持续发展报告而引发的情感反应会无意中影响投资者的决策，而这种偏见可以通过对企业社会责任 (CSR) 绩效的明确评估得到缓解。一个未探索的含义是这种偏见是否也会影响贷方的决定，这种偏见可能会对信贷的有效分配产生严重的意外后果。虽然投资决策的主要关注点依赖于股票收益最大化，但借款人偿还债务的能力是贷款决策的核心，可能有助于贷款人弥补信息不对称和评估信用。使用实验方法，我们发现 CSR 绩效报告确实引起了情感反应，但与投资的情况相反，它们不会对信用判断和贷款决策产生意外影响。我们的研究结果表明，贷方可能会将其 CSR 影响归因于其来源，并使用 CSR 绩效作为借款人诚信的代理。