Demand-Driven Corporate Social Responsibility and Accounting Quality : Evidence on Symbolic vs Substantive Change after Large Technological Disasters

We examine a set of technological disasters with large negative effects on the environment. The disasters are each caused by a single firm, and trigger stakeholders’ attention for corporate social responsibility (CSR) at the industry level. We find that firms in the affected industries increase CSR performance, but not in a substantive manner. We refer to this CSR performance as socially enforced or demand-driven CSR. We document that demand-driven increases in CSR performance do not improve environmental performance, nor do they reduce CSR concerns, or entail costly actions for firms. CSR increases in our setting lead to lower quality financial reporting and lower quality narrative disclosure. Overall, our evidence suggests that socially enforced CSR practices are symbolic and may lead to unfavourable outcomes, including impaired transparency