Can Social Donation Increase the R&D Investment of Enterprises?—Analysis from the Perspective of Institutional Environment

This paper selects the listed companies of Shanghai and Shenzhen A shares in China from 2013 to 2018 as the research object, empirically analyzes the impact of social donation on R&D investment, and examines how the institutional environment regulates the relationship between them. The empirical study shows that social donation has an incentive effect on R&D investment of enterprises. Both formal and informal institutional environment can encourage R&D investment. The formal institutional environment has no obvious regulating effect on the relationship between social donation and R&D investment, while the informal institutional environment has a significant positive regulatory effect on this relationship. The conclusion of this paper is helpful for us to have a comprehensive understanding of the impact of external environmental factors on R&D investment in the process of enterprise transformation and upgrading.