Floodlight or spotlight? Public attention and corporate social responsibility decoupling

Abstract

Recently, there has been a surge of criticism against corporate social responsibility (CSR) decoupling due to its detrimental implications for both business and society. Thus, reducing this disconnect and fostering the consistency between firms' talk and walk has become an urgent priority. We employ a fixed-effects model to examine the impact of public attention on CSR decoupling using 5633 annual observations from Chinese A-share listed firms spanning 2011–2020. Our results show that firms subjected to heightened public attention tend to engage less in CSR decoupling. Further dividing into “greenwashing” and “brownwashing” types, we discover that public attention significantly curbs the occurrence of “greenwashing” decoupling. Channel tests indicate that public attention effectively inhabits CSR decoupling through information and supervision channels. We also document that a lower level of CSR decoupling for firms with intensive public attention results in lower reputational crisis and superior financial performance, highlighting the benefits of aligning CSR talk with CSR walk. These findings provide evidence supporting the imperative role of public oversight in curbing corporate misconduct and contribute to the ongoing scholarly debate on CSR decoupling.