The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Corporate Performance - Evidence From Listed Companies in the Sports Industry in China

Abstract

Maximizing profits has always been the goal and principle pursued in a company’s development. Based on this so-called business principle, companies often blindly pursue economic interests, leaving behind environmental protection and even labor rights and consumer interests, which cause many negative externalities. With the continuous development of the society and the economy, the society no longer evaluates the corporate performance of a company based on its financial performance alone. The society now expects a company not only to improve its financial performance, but also fulfill its social responsibility obligations. However, a large number of companies in China do not put their social responsibility in place. The expenditures on environmental governance, the rights of employees and small/medium investors, along with the intensity of public charity donations, are still unqualified. While the society strongly encourages companies to fulfill their social responsibility, some other parties believe that fulfilling corporate social responsibility increases the cost of a company, which consequently has a negative impact on the financial performance of the company. As a result, whether there is a need for companies to fulfill social responsibility, whether the economic benefits and corporate social responsibility are mutually antagonistic, and how companies should balance their own operations, management and fulfillment of social responsibility, need to be further studied.

As an important part of the H-industry, the sports industry has a positive effect on optimizing the industrial structure, expanding domestic demand, and promoting employment. It has developed into a new long-term point in promoting urban economic development. However, at present, there has been little research on the capital management of listed companies in the sports industry. Therefore, based on the Chinese market environment, this paper listed investigates companies in the sports industry. It attempts to find out how the implementation of corporate social responsibility in the Chinese sports industry impacts the corporate performance. This paper uses panel data of 16 listed companies in the sports industry between 2009 and 2016, and rules out the possibility of spurious regression through a series of preliminary tests. Panel correction error model, asymptotic fixed effect model, super-efficiency DEA-Tobit model and threshold panel model are utilized to analyze the influence of fulfilling corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the corporate performance of listed companies in the sports industry in China.