This study investigates the relationship between corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Using GHG emissions data and the CSR index announced by the Korea Economic Justice Institute, we find that companies emitting more GHG are highly rated in the CSR index. This relationship becomes stronger as the firm size increases. This result indicates that reducing GHG, especially for big firms, may not be an effective way to raise the firm’s CSR index as expected. We interpret this result as suggesting that other social contribution behaviours may be valued more than GHG reduction, despite its actual environmental influence. We therefore argue that the current CSR index possibly underestimates the importance of environmental factors, such as GHG reduction, and thus, the index needs to be improved.

Providing sufficient financial accessibility to low-income individuals is considered a way to decrease income inequality and could be a key factor in sustainable economic growth. To make the financial accessibility policy more effective, analyses of individuals’ understanding of financial risk within low-income groups need to be conducted. The current authors investigated individuals’ attitudes towards loan financial risk in terms of gender difference. Using South Korean survey data, we examined the relationship between gender and attitude towards loan financial risk with a regression analysis. We found that within a low-income group, males were more willing to pay higher interest rates than females. In addition, males’ willingness to pay high interest rates became stronger when their current financial costs were high. The results indicate that males are less careful with the risks that high interest rates can bring. Thus, the results imply that interventions, such as more substantial financial education, are required for males to make financial accessibility polices more effective.

This paper investigates whether chaebol firms tend to issue corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports more than non-chaebol firms. Based on previous studies documenting chaebols’ tunneling activities at the expense of other shareholders, we anticipate that chaebol firms are more likely to voluntarily disclose their CSR reports even if investors may discount their values because CSR disclosure is an effective means of window dressing. The empirical results support our expectations. We find that chaebol firms are more likely to disclose CSR reports and a chaebol firm’s CSR report disclosure is less evaluated than a non-chaebol firm in the capital market. The result indicates that even if CSR report disclosure may have positive effect on firm value in general, investors may discount the value of chaebol firms’ CSR reports.