Does Benefit Corporation Status Matter to Investors? An Exploratory Study of Investor Perceptions and Decisions
调查了136名投资者和57名MBA学生，发现即使公益公司与传统公司CSR评级相同，投资者也预期公益公司未来CSR更高，约三分之一愿意牺牲财务回报投资公益公司。
We investigate whether the disclosure of a firm’s decision to organize as a benefit corporation (BC) rather than a traditional C corporation (CC) influences investors. We survey 136 investors and 57 MBA students and find that they expect BCs to attain higher future corporate social responsibility (CSR) than CCs even when both have equal CSR ratings. Approximately one third of our sample prefers to invest in BCs when CCs have greater financial returns, indicating a willingness by some investors to sacrifice personal financial gain for social good. Our results suggest that investors weight the information contained in BC disclosures as reliable and value-relevant in their investment decisions. We extend the CSR disclosure literature by indicating how investors weight this new type of CSR information, which may affect how BCs fare as publicly traded companies.