Is corporate social responsibility a matter of trust? A cross-country investigation
研究了社会信任如何影响跨国企业社会责任（CSR），发现社会信任水平越高，企业CSR活动越多，机制在于信任减少误解并促进利益相关者合作。
This study examines how social trust influences corporate social responsibility (CSR) across countries. We find a positive relationship between CSR engagement and societal trust. We also document the economic mechanisms explaining how trust affects CSR activities. Our findings are robust to alternative CSR measures, sub-sample analyses, and country-level estimations. Furthermore, the results from difference-in-difference methods and an instrumental variables (IVs) approach imply that our findings are robust in accounting for endogeneity. Overall, our findings suggest that a higher level of trust reduces the likelihood of harmful misunderstandings while facilitating greater stakeholder cooperation, thereby increasing CSR activities.