This paper examines the effect of independent director reputation incentives on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Using an unbalanced panel of 3765 Chinese-listed firms between 2009 and 2014, this study suggests that independent director reputation incentives improve CSR. Furthermore, it is found that this effect is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) than in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). In addition, our results also show that the effect of independent director reputation incentives on CSR is moderated by firm size, and this effect is much stronger in relatively larger firms. Together, these results suggest that reputation is an effective mechanism that can motivate independent directors to fulfill their role of monitoring and advising CSR, especially in non-SOEs and relatively larger firms. We add new insights to the research on the topics of independent director system, protection of the stakeholders’ interests, and CSR enhancement.

This paper studies the environmentally sustainable investment of an agricultural supply chain composed of a farmer and a company, under three subsidy policies which are the non-subsidy policy, the fixed subsidy policy, and the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) subsidy policy. Then, we analyse the impact of different subsidy policy and adverse weather on the costs of the government and profits of the farmer and the company. By comparing with the non-subsidy policy, we find that both the fixed subsidy policy and the ARC policy encourage the farmer to improve the environmentally sustainable investment level and increase the profit of the farmer and the company. We also find that both the fixed subsidy policy and the ARC subsidy policy lead to an increase in government spending. Our results show that the ARC subsidy policy has a significate advantage in encouraging the farmer’s environmentally sustainable investment if the adverse weather is relatively serious, comparing with the fixed subsidy policy. In turn, our results also show that the ARC subsidy policy is more beneficial for both the farmer and the company than the fixed subsidy policy if the adverse weather is relatively serious, which then leads to a higher expenditure of the government. Therefore, our conclusion serves as a theoretical basis for governments to formulate agricultural subsidy policies and promote sustainable development of the agricultural environment.

This paper aims to examine the effect of busy directors on corporate social responsibility (CSR) based on their directorships’ reputation incentives. Using the panel data of Chinese-listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchange between 2016 and 2021, fixed-effects panel regression analysis is employed as the empirical methodology. In so doing, we find that the effect of busy directors on CSR appears to be nonlinear. Then, by focusing on the relative size of the firms served by busy directors, our study further shows that busy directors can improve CSR in their relatively more prestigious directorships. Nevertheless, busy directors may induce negative CSR in their relatively less prestigious directorships. These results together identify reputation incentives as one factor in determining whether busy directors affect CSR. Therefore, we conclude that reputation is an effective mechanism that can motivate busy directors to monitor and advise CSR.