Which Are the Main Factors Influencing Corporate Social Responsibility Information Disclosures on Universities' Websites.

Raquel Garde Sanchez,Antonio Manuel López Hernandez,Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar

doi:10.3390/ijerph18020524

Abstract

Universities are now becoming more active in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Nevertheless, they do not appear to be granting the same degree of importance to the dissemination of these activities. This article analyses the voluntary corporate social responsibility information disclosed by leading USA universities. We created several indexes of corporate social responsibility information disclosure and examined main universities’ characteristics that affect corporate social responsibility disclosure by these entities. The findings obtained show that the universities are strongly committed to the dissemination of corporate social responsibility information, and that a university’s size, affiliation, public/private status and ranking position are the factors most significantly affecting its online disclosure of general corporate social responsibility information. These findings could be useful for university administrators, especially those in public universities, highlighting the importance of developing and supporting policies and incentives to promote CSR disclosure and thus attract new students and meet social expectations about the ethical behaviour of universities.

Highlights

This factor, too, motivates these organisations to publish larger volumes of information, in order to improve their image and reputation. This positive relationship has been observed in the university sector, by studies such as those by Gordon et al [25] and Gallego et al [26], who found that university size has a positive influence on the amount of information disclosed. In view of these considerations, we propose the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 1 (H1): There is a positive relationship between a university’s size and the Corporate social responsibility (CSR) online information disclosed on their website
The CSR information disclosed by the universities in our sample corresponds to the items included in our evaluation model
With respect to factors that may promote information disclosure, our findings show that, all of the variables considered are associated with the increased provision of CSRrelated information

Summary

Introduction

Res. Public Health 2021, Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been defined as “the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society [ . ] to integrate social, environmental, ethical, human rights and consumer concerns into their business operations and core strategy in close collaboration with their stakeholders [1]. Public Health 2021, Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been defined as “the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society [ . This issue is of growing importance in mainstream businesses and in the academic world, as institutions seek to promote a better and more sustainable world [2]

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