Stakeholder salience, positive CSR news and the market value of banks

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research explores the effects that media coverage of corporate social responsibility (CSR) news related to investor, customer, employee and community issues has on the market value of Spanish banks, measured as the impact generated in abnormal returns for these companies. We use an event study with a sample of 190 positive CSR articles published online between 2015 and 2018 in the most important Spanish business newspaper according to its diffusion rate. The findings demonstrate that positive CSR news related to investor, customer, employee and community issues generates positive abnormal returns for listed banks. In the [−1,+1] window, positive investor news has notably larger effects on the abnormal returns for these companies than positive news related to customer, employee and community issues, which have similar effects.