According to surveys of companies, branding is one of the main objectives of their corporate social responsibility (CSR). With advantageous data from Brand Finance, we address three contextual factors that may condition the relationship between CSR and brand value. First, we hypothesize that the relationship between CSR and brand value obtains across major world regions and industrial sectors (“the convergence thesis”). Second, we hypothesize that the relationship has weakened with time, as companies have had increasing difficulty using CSR to differentiate their brands in a sea of CSR-espousing competitors (“the crowding out thesis”). Third, we hypothesize that the relationship between CSR and brand value is weaker where a brand’s identity is different from that of its corporate owner, which may make it difficult for observers to readily link (corporate-level) CSR with its potential (lower level) brand beneficiaries (“the identity-match thesis”). We support these hypotheses with random-effects, fixed-effects, and instrumental-variable regressions before ending with contributions, limitations, implications, and potential next steps.

根据对企业的调查，品牌建设是其企业社会责任（CSR）的主要目标之一。利用来自 Brand Finance 的有利数据，我们解决了可能影响 CSR 与品牌价值之间关系的三个背景因素。首先，我们假设企业社会责任与品牌价值之间的关系跨越世界主要地区和行业（“趋同论”）。其次，我们假设这种关系随着时间的推移而减弱，因为公司越来越难以利用 CSR 在众多支持 CSR 的竞争对手中区分其品牌（“挤出论”）。第三，我们假设当品牌的身份与其企业所有者的身份不同时，CSR 与品牌价值之间的关系较弱，这可能使观察者难以轻易地将（企业层面的）企业社会责任与其潜在的（较低层面的）品牌受益者联系起来（“身份匹配论点”）。在以贡献、局限性、影响和潜在的后续步骤结束之前，我们用随机效应、固定效应和工具变量回归支持这些假设。