Chinese national civilized city and corporate social responsibility: will civilized city promote corporate social responsibility?

ABSTRACT

The continuous improvement of China’s status in the world economy has also promoted China’s urban construction. The Chinese government proposes to build a more civilized and more sustainable city, and awards National Civilized City Award (NCCA) to cities that meet the standards. In order to obtain the title of NCCA, local governments use administrative power and formulate relevant laws to have a profound impact on local enterprises, such as assuming more corporate social responsibilities. Based on the data of listed enterprises in China from 2012 to 2018, the PSM-DID method is used to empirically test the impact of NCCA on corporate social responsibility (CSR). The result shows that the NCCA campaign has significantly improved the CSR of local enterprises; NCCA has a greater positive impact on CSR to customer and environmental. The research links the creation of a civilized city with CSR for the first time, reflecting the Chinese characteristics that policies have a significant impact on enterprises.

KEYWORDS:

• Civilized city
• corporate social responsibility
• China
• stakeholder theory

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• M14
• G30

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant No.71802138.