ABSTRACT

In support of legitimacy theory arguments for corporate social responsibility disclosure, a variety of prior studies document that either increases or decreases in social and regulatory cost exposures appear to lead to corresponding changes in the level of information provided. However, none of these studies investigates a situation where social and regulatory cost exposure changes are not in sync; a situation we argue taking place with respect to the Trump presidency in the United States, and none considers the role that political polarization might play in company responses. Based on a sample of 170 large U.S. firms, we find that the extent of climate change disclosure in standalone CSR reports did not appear to change, on average, from the Pre-Trump (2014–2015) to the Trump (2017–2018) eras. However, cross sectional analysis indicates more negative changes in disclosure for companies headquartered in states strongly supporting Trump in the 2016 election relative to other firms and more positive changes for companies in carbon intensive industries. Where firms are subject to both factors, we provide evidence that, at least with respect to space allocated to climate change disclosure in the reports, the increased social concerns appear to dominate reduced regulatory exposures. Our results support legitimacy theory arguments, but illustrate the importance of disentangling potentially competing effects, and suggest attention needs to be paid to potential differing political climates in the locales of organizations’ headquarters.

摘要

为支持企业社会责任披露的合法性理论论点，各种先前的研究文件表明，社会和监管成本暴露的增加或减少似乎会导致所提供信息水平的相应变化。然而，这些研究都没有调查社会和监管成本暴露变化不同步的情况；我们认为发生在美国特朗普总统任期内的情况，没有人考虑政治两极分化可能在公司反应中发挥的作用。基于 170 家美国大型公司的样本，我们发现独立企业社会责任报告中的气候变化披露程度平均而言从前特朗普（2014-2015）到特朗普（2017-2018）似乎没有变化时代。然而，横截面分析表明，与其他公司相比，总部位于在 2016 年大选中强烈支持特朗普的州的公司在披露方面的负面变化更多，而碳密集型行业的公司则发生了更多的积极变化。如果公司同时受到这两个因素的影响，我们提供的证据表明，至少在报告中分配给气候变化披露的空间方面，增加的社会问题似乎主导了减少的监管风险。我们的结果支持合法性理论的论点，但说明了解开潜在竞争影响的重要性，并表明需要关注组织总部所在地潜在的不同政治气候。