Effects of CEO’s Geographic Proximity on Corporate Social Responsibility

In this study, we examine the impact mechanism of the geographic proximity between a CEO’s native place and their company’s headquarters on corporate social responsibility (CSR), from the perspectives of social identity theory and upper echelons theory, as well as the moderators of these relationships. We assume that the geographic proximity will increase CEO willingness to fulfill CSR, and we predict that these relationships will be moderated by external differences in the institutional environment index of a CEO’s native place and the difference in Gross Domestic Product between a CEO’s native place and the location of their company’s headquarters. Using data for publicly listed firms from 2012 to 2020, we test our hypotheses, and the results largely validate our theoretical framework. By introducing CEO geographic proximity and CSR as the main research focus, this study contributes to the literature on the heterogeneity of geographic location and CEOs’ strategic decision-making. To examine our hypotheses, we utilize Chinese publicly listed companies that have published CSR reports as samples. More specifically, our research samples are data from companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges A-share from 2012 - 2020. The sample data mainly include the latitude and longitude of the city where the CEO’s company headquarters and the CEO’s native place, as well as data on CSR. Our data are derived from Hexun.com, the China Stock Market & Accounting Research Database (CSMAR), corporate annual reports, the WIND Database, and the China Economic and Social Big Data research platform (http://data.cnki.net/). We obtain the longitude and latitude of firms’ headquarters from CSMAR and data on CSR report scores from Hexun.com and CSMAR. We also manually collected each CEO’s native place and birth-place. To ensure sample reliability, we exclude data with ST and PT class flags from our sample, because these companies received special treatment due to abnormal financial situations, as well as observations with missing data and financial firms. The final sample comprises 6717 firm-year observations. To control for the potential effect of extreme value, all continuous variables are winsorized at the 1% and 99% levels.本研究基于社会认同理论与高层梯队理论，考察首席执行官（CEO）出生地与企业总部之间的地理邻近性对企业社会责任（Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR）的影响机制，以及该关系的调节效应。研究提出，地理邻近性将提升CEO履行企业社会责任的意愿，并预测该关系会受到两方面因素的调节：一是CEO出生地的制度环境指数差异，二是CEO出生地与企业总部所在地区的国内生产总值（Gross Domestic Product, GDP）差异。本文以2012-2020年A股上市公司数据为基础检验研究假说，实证结果大体验证了本文的理论框架。本研究将CEO地理邻近性与企业社会责任作为核心研究议题，丰富了地理位置异质性与CEO战略决策相关的学术文献。 为检验研究假说，本文选取发布过企业社会责任报告的中国A股上市公司作为研究样本，具体为2012-2020年上海证券交易所与深圳证券交易所的A股上市企业。样本数据主要包含CEO任职企业总部所在城市、CEO出生地的经纬度信息，以及企业社会责任相关数据。本文的数据来源包括和讯网（Hexun.com）、中国股票市场与会计研究数据库（China Stock Market & Accounting Research Database, CSMAR）、企业年度报告、万得（WIND）数据库，以及中国经济与社会大数据研究平台（http://data.cnki.net/）。其中，企业总部经纬度数据来自CSMAR，企业社会责任报告评分数据来自和讯网与CSMAR；CEO出生地与籍贯信息则通过手工收集获得。为保证样本可靠性，本文剔除了被实施特别处理（ST）与退市风险警示（PT）的企业样本（此类企业因财务状况异常而被特殊监管处理）、存在数据缺失的观测值，以及金融类企业。最终有效样本包含6717个公司-年度观测值。为控制极端值的潜在影响，所有连续变量均在1%与99%分位点处进行缩尾处理。