Employing the content analysis approach, this paper aims to identify the determinants of corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) in China using the annual reports of over 800 A-share listed firms on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. We find that CSRD is positively associated with firm size, media exposure, share ownership concentration and institutional shareholding. Moreover, firms in High-Profile environmentally sensitive industries tend to disclose more corporate social responsibility (CSR) information than those in Low-Profile environmentally sensitive industries, supporting the view that political cost is the primary constraint for Chinese listed firms. Our results provide important insights for academics interested in the CSR issue in emerging economies, for enterprise managers interested in exploiting the annual reports as a strategy to legitimize their corporate social conduct, and for government regulators committed to improving CSR activities and information disclosure.

The timeliness of annual reports has received serious attention by the Chinese regulatory and professional bodies in recent years. Using 8294 company reports from the Chinese listed companies during 1993–2003, this paper analyzes the timeliness of annual reports by first examining the trend of reporting lags, separating the effects of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ news on timeliness, and then by using a multivariate regression to identify the determinants of reporting lags. It is found that there is a significant improvement on timeliness of reports although the shortening of reporting lags shows a U-shape over the data period. There is strong evidence that reporting lags were related to firm performance as bad news tended to hold back timely release of corporate reports. It is interesting to note that government policies have also played an important role in improving timeliness of corporate annual reporting in China but much more work needs to be done to make sure that listed companies provide more timely and reliable reports to investors and regulatory authorities.

Poverty remains the biggest challenge facing the world today. In 2016, the Chinese government launched a national campaign to eradicate poverty by 2020, among which Chinese listed companies have made significant contributions to. This paper focuses on the targeted poverty alleviation (TPA) and investigates the relationship between corporate participation in TPA and its corporate value. As compared to firm’s own corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, participating in government-initiated CSR activities can better enhance corporate value. This is especially so when firms engage in penetrative “integrated poverty alleviation” rather than the direct approach of “donative poverty alleviation”. This paper adopts the Mediating Effect Model to explain the relationship between corporate participation in TPA and their corporate value, with the shareholding ratio of institutional investors, government subsidies and corporate reputation as mediating factors. Findings suggest that corporations’ active implementation of TPA actions can increase the shareholding ratio of institutional investors and government subsidies and improve corporate reputation, thereby significantly increasing their corporate value. However, the impact of participation in TPA on corporate value is limited by factors including the nature of property rights, the intensity of competition in the industry and the degree of marketization. The impact is generally more significant in state-owned enterprises, areas with lesser industry competition and higher marketization. This study provides a fresh perspective for theories related to CSR, poverty eradication and corporate value of listed companies.

This paper investigates the impact of an external uncertain factor, litigation risk, on corporate participation in Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) activities. It proposes and explores three possible mechanisms, namely, restore legitimacy, send positive signals, and maintain corporate reputation, for corporations to manage their litigation risk via the participation in TPA. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2016 to 2020, it shows that for corporations with high legitimacy pressure, high stakeholder concern, and strong reputation protection motive, litigation risk increases corporate investment in TPA. After litigation cases arise, corporations can manage their litigation risk through participation in TPA, thereby restoring legitimacy, sending positive signals, and maintaining corporate reputation. Furthermore, participation in TPA can also moderate the negative impact of litigation risk on enterprise value. The results remain significant after robustness tests on endogeneity, variable and measurement errors, and firm fixed effects. This paper is insightful for future studies relating to the economic consequences of litigation risk. Concurrently, by exploring the role of China’s legal environment in promoting the effect of corporate participation in TPA, this paper not only expands the scope of factors influencing corporate TPA inputs, but also provides policy implications for the formulation of China’s upcoming Rural Revitalization Strategy.