A Study of the Determinants of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure: Evidence from China

The aim of this dissertation is to analyse whether stakeholder power and several corporate characteristics are potential determinants of corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) practices in China. Stakeholder power consists of shareholders, government, and creditor power, and corporate characteristics include firm size, industry classification, and profitability. To achieve the objective described above, the quantitative method was adopted. The significance of these explanatory variables was tested by employing the data of listed firms involved in the SSE corporate governance index group in 2017 and 2018, which were collected from the database and the website of Rankings Corporate Social Responsibility Rating (RKS). This study provides evidence that firms with higher CSRD ratings are found to show statistically significant higher leverage and profitability, and be more likely to belong to state-owned enterprises and high-profile industries. Nevertheless, shareholder power and firm size seem to be unable to explain the CSRD in China. The empirical results suggest both stakeholder theory and legitimacy theory can be adopted as suitable foundations for the research on the determinants of CSRD. However, The roles of these stakeholders in affecting the managerial decision of CSRD seems to be weak, and also stakeholders’ expectations and demands are low in China. This study provided an opportunity to advance the understanding of the relationship between the underlying determinants and CSRD for academics who have an interest in the research on CSRD, corporate managers who use CSRD as a tool to communicate with the public, and regulators who try to encourage companies to disclose more information in China