Signals from CSR competition: The influence of relative CSR performance on analysts’ recommendations
研究企业相对CSR绩效和两年间的改善如何作为互补信号影响分析师推荐，发现分析师对相对CSR绩效反应积极，且改善效果递减，对高绩效企业更显著。
Due to the institutionalization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its integration into firm strategy, firms are engaged in fierce competition, which has gained stakeholders' attention. As intermediary stakeholders, security analysts screen information on firms' CSR activities to make more accurate investment recommendations. Integrating signaling through CSR competition and screening theory, we develop a framework wherein firms' relative CSR performance and improvement across two years are viewed as complementary signals reflecting their ability and intent to engage in CSR and affect analysts' recommendations. Using a panel of Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2019 (n = 15,735 firm-year observations), we find that analysts respond positively to firms' relative CSR performance. Further analyses show that firms' CSR performance improvement has a decreasingly positive effect on analysts’ recommendations, and this effect is more pronounced for firms with higher relative CSR performance. Our study contributes to the literature on CSR and screening theory by highlighting the value of comparative CSR signals and generates practical implications for participants in CSR competitions.