Description
Extant literature is equivocal on whether and how corporate social responsivity (CSR) activities affect corporates’ performance. There is limited research on CSRperformance relationship in insurance and no research ever investigating this relationship in China’s life and health (LH) insurance market, to the best of our knowledge. China LH insurance market is the world’s second biggest LH insurance market albeit receiving limited attention in academia. We innovatively proxy insurer CSR performance by the philanthropic activities disclosed on the Yearbook of China Insurance. Alternatively, we use administrative penalties received from the provincial regulators as a proxy for the negative shock on the insurers. Our sample period is from 2010 to 2018. We provide robust empirical evidence that firm CSR performance is positively correlated to the LH insurers’ operating performance. More specifically, we find insurers’ premiums written are positively related to firm philanthropic activities but negatively related to the administrative penalties. In contrast, insurers’ lapse ratios are negatively related to firm philanthropic activities but positively related to the administrative penalties. Furthermore, we find that the CSR-performance relationship is moderated by both firm-characteristic factors and provincial-level macroeconomic factors, including the insurer ownership structure, the business diversification index, the market competition magnitude, the local education level, the provincial GDP growth rate, the urbanization level, and the severity of local pollution.| Period | 23 Mar 2022 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Postgraduate Seminar Series |
| Event type | Public Lecture |