Do creditors appreciate CSR transparency and credibility in emerging markets?
研究了新兴市场中企业社会责任报告对债务获取和成本的影响，发现报告能改善债务条件，但外部鉴证和GRI采用对债权人决策无显著影响。
Purpose This study investigates CSR reporting’s role in debt access and cost of debt with the moderating role of external assurance and GRI adoption in emerging markets. Such an investigation will help facilitate external fund flow to firms in better terms. Design/methodology/approach We collected data from 16 emerging markets between 2008 and 2019 from the Thomson Reuters Eikon and ran fixed effects regression analysis and robustness tests by addressing endogeneity concerns, adopting alternative sample and integrating additional control variables. Findings The results show that CSR reporting has a positive association with access to debt and a negative association with the cost of debt. Furthermore, both external assurance and GRI adoption do not significantly moderate between CSR reporting and access to debt and cost of debt. Hence, creditors in emerging markets are not interested in CSR report assurance and GRI framework adoption and do not integrate them into their lending decisions. Originality/value Emerging markets are unique settings characterized by high growth rates, limited capital availability, high debt costs and weak institutional environments. Thus, reaching debt with convenient conditions is critical for emerging market firms to finance their growth. Hence, our study will help emerging market firms reach external funding more easily and in better terms via CSR transparency. Besides, our investigation is based on a broad sample of emerging markets, and hence updates prior emerging market studies conducted in single-country settings. Lastly, we test the complementarity of third-party assurance and GRI adoption to CSR reporting in loan contracting.