Institutional Legitimacy's Impact on Corporate Social Responsibility of Commercial Banks

This paper applied institutional theory to explore the relationships between institutional legitimacy and corporate social responsibility by analyzing financial data and media reports of commercial banks in China from 2008 to 2010. This article revealed the determinants of corporate social responsibility from regulative, normative and cognitive aspects. Empirical study shows that regulation pressure has positive effect on corporate social performance; banks with higher claims of media and the public have higher corporate social performance than those with lower claims. Besides, listed banks have higher social performance than non-listed banks. Compared to non-stated shareholders, state-owned shareholders bring higher social performance. The relationship between corporate economic performance and social performance is inverted U-type.