Corporate Governance, External Supervision and Voluntary Attestation to the Corporate Social Responsibility Report: Based on the Shanghai Stock Market

Abstract

We explore determinants for attestation of corporate social responsibility(CSR) reports from perspectives of corporate governance and external supervision based on data of listed companies that published CSR reports and accepted assurance of reports voluntarily of Shanghai stock market from 2010 to 2012. The main findings are as follows: at present, companies do not have strong motivations to accept CSR report assurance voluntarily in China. But growing number of companies that assure their CSR report indicates increasing trend towards assurance of CSR reports for stakeholders. The factors having significant correlations to voluntary assurance are nature of equity, size of independent directors, scale of debts and hiring the Big Four as annual report auditor. The findings are important for managements and regulators.