Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
DOI
10.1111/jfir.70030
Publication Title
Journal of Financial Research
Volume
Advance online publication
Pages
1-37
Abstract
We revisit whether disclosures of negative Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) incidents adversely affect firms' stock prices. While univariate tests reveal significant negative abnormal returns around incident announcements, the effect disappears once firm characteristics, industry, and time‐fixed effects are controlled for. We find no robust evidence that CSR incidents or firms' Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) commitments influence stock price reactions on the event day or across broader windows. These results suggest that previously documented negative market responses may be attributable to endogeneity. Our baseline results are consistent with informed trading behavior: short‐sellers do not increase activity in incident‐related stocks relative to either non‐incident firms or ESG‐aligned portfolios.
Rights
© 2025 The Authors
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
ORCID
0000-0002-9780-6005 (Chen)
Original Publication Citation
Chen, C., Doukas, J. A., & Zhang, R. G. (2025). Are CSR incidents truly bad news? Journal of Financial Research. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfir.70030
Repository Citation
Chen, Chen; Doukas, John A.; and Zhang, Rongyao Gloria, "Are CSR Incidents Truly Bad News?" (2025). Finance Faculty Publications. 57.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/finance_facpubs/57
Supporting Information
Included in
Banking and Finance Law Commons, Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Finance Commons