Do Investors Appreciate Information about Corporate Social Responsibility? Evidence from the Polish Equity Market.

The results of plentiful research indicate a positive relation between corporate social responsibility and financial results of companies, which should make investors focus on these companies which represent high CSR standards and events indicating changes in the level of these standards should be considered by them as important information and should be reflected in the asset price, which affects the rate of return. In order to find out whether this phenomenon exists on the emerging markets, the research applying the event study methodology was conducted to determine the impact of the inclusion of companies in or exclusion from the ethical RESPECT Index operating on the Warsaw Stock Exchange on the rate of return on equity . The results confirm that investors take into account the information about changes in the level of corporate social responsibility and respond positively to its growth and negatively to its decline. In this respect they correspond to the reactions of investors on more mature markets. The obtained results, besides the contribution made into the development of theory, have also practical implications as they show that the presence in an ethical index helps to communicate higher standards of corporate social responsibility and indicating it to investors may exert an impact on the company market value. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.27.4.13377