Does corporate social responsibility contribute to reducing energy intensity?

Abstract

This study is the first approach in the literature that evaluates corporate social responsibility’s (CSR) contribution to reducing firms’ energy intensity through an ex-post evaluation. The impact of CSR is obtained through the difference-in-differences (DID) and matching with difference-in-differences (MDID) techniques, using data from the Longitudinal Survey of Firms between 2015 and 2017. The results obtained with the DID technique show that the CSR policy does not significantly impact the intensity of electricity expenditure and the intensity of fuel expenditure. The MDID technique also does not find an effect of CSR on the intensity of electricity expenditure. Still, it shows that CSR reduces the intensity of fuel expenditure in the mining sector’s firms (5.9% ∼ 13.0%) and transport and storage sector’s firms (4.6% ∼ 5.3%). Thus, it can be concluded that CSR only modifies energy intensity in Chilean firms that belong to fuel-intensive sectors.