Trends in Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting. The Case of Chinese Listed Companies

Xiaojuan Wu,Patrycja Hąbek

doi:10.3390/su13158640

Abstract

Compared with Western developed countries, corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation in China started relatively late, but so far, its development has been going on for more than ten years. Therefore, the development process of CSR reporting as a vital tool to reflect the CSR related information of Chinese listed companies is worth studying. It has been asserted in a large amount of literature that the government of a country has an important influence on the development of CSR reporting. Thus, in this paper, we aim to study the trends in CSR reporting practices of Chinese listed companies through statistical analysis methods and then consider the role of the government in it. The results show that the number of CSR reports issued by Chinese listed companies has increased year by year; notably, the number of voluntary CSR disclosure and environmental information disclosure has increased significantly. However, the overall disclosure rate of CSR reports is low and shows no upward trend, the published CSR reports lack third-party certification, and the information disclosure level of most CSR reports is concentrated at a relatively low level. The findings provide some useful references for the future development of Chinese CSR related laws, regulations, and guidelines.

Highlights

As the concept and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have attracted more and more attention [1,2], CSR reporting as the tool of communicating CSR information has naturally become one of the foci of academics [3,4,5,6,7,8]
Our findings provide the Chinese government with insight into CSR reporting and indicate the need to further strengthen the supervision of CSR
We present the research findings concerning the number, type of CSR disclosures, its verification, and degree of disclosure, taking environmental information disclosure into account

Summary

Introduction

As the concept and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have attracted more and more attention [1,2], CSR reporting as the tool of communicating CSR information has naturally become one of the foci of academics [3,4,5,6,7,8]. Many Western developed countries have required their companies to release CSR-related information since 2000. All listed companies in France must disclose information about social and environmental conditions in their annual reports since 2001 [9]. It is relatively late for China to require companies to compulsorily disclose CSR-related information. CSR reporting in China has experienced more than ten years of development; the evolution of these practices is a topic worthy of study. The government of a country has played an important role in the development of CSR reporting [11,12,13]. The aim of this paper is to analyze the trends in CSR reporting of Chinese listed companies as well as indicating the government’s role in development of CSR reporting practices in China

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion