The value of corporate social responsibility during the crisis: Chinese evidence

Abstract This study examines whether a firm's trust and social capital, built up through corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, pays off during the crisis period. We first use the US sample to replicate Lins et al.'s. (2017) baseline analyses and show consistent results. We then conduct the same analyses using the Chinese sample. Unlike the US evidence, Chinese firms' CSR attributes do not appear to enhance their stock returns during the crisis period, indicating that trust and social capital might not play the same role in a relatively underdeveloped market subject to considerable political influence, and that the effectiveness of a CSR-associated insurance-like function might thus be highly dependent on institutional environments.