Does the provision of voluntary corporate social responsibility disclosure influence the cost of equity capital? Evidence from Australia and the United Kingdom

Abstract

The practice of managers of firms making voluntary social disclosures has become widespread. Corporate ownership (shareholders) will be interested to know whether these voluntary social disclosures affect them by influencing the firm’s cost of equity capital. This study investigates the relationship between the voluntary corporate social responsibility disclosure of Australian and UK firms, based on the 2008 KPMG International Survey of Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting and the cost of equity capital based on the Botosan and Plumlee (2005) model. Using a sample of 59 firms ranked in the top 100 of Australian and UK firms, we find that firms making voluntary corporate social responsibility disclosure in compliance with the Global Reporting Initiative Guidelines are associated with an increased cost of equity capital. Our main results are robust to several alternative measures of voluntary corporate social responsibility disclosure. These results can be attributed to two reasons. Firstly, firms making voluntary corporate social responsibility disclosure provide information that allows certain traders to make judgments about a firm’s performance that are superior to the judgments of other traders. As a result, there may be more information asymmetry amongst traders. Secondly, shareholders consider that the information production and proprietary costs associated with voluntary corporate social responsibility disclosure outweighs its potential benefits. Both explanations suggest that investors will impose a higher cost of equity on firms making voluntary corporate social responsibility disclosure. In the additional tests, we show that our main results are robust to alternative measures of voluntary corporate social responsibility disclosure.