Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Practices and Firm Performance: Empirical Evidence from Hotel Industry in Thailand

The main purposes of this study are (1) to investigate the extent and level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of the hotel in Thailand, (2) to test the different level of CSR practices of the hotel between CSR-in-process and CSR-after-process, and (3) to examine the effect of CSR practices on hotel's performance measured by balanced scorecard (BSC). This study employs survey data collected from 402 owners and executives of hotels in Thailand. Descriptive analysis, paired sample t-test, correlation matrix, and multiple regression were used to analyze the data from the mailed questionnaire. The results show that both CSR-in-process and CSR-after-process practices of hotels were at a high level. However, the level of CSR-in-process practice of hotels was significantly higher than CSR-after-process practice. Moreover, the study found the positive effect of both CSR-in-process and CSR-after-process practices on hotel performance measured by BSC. The results of sensitivity analysis also show the positive effect of CSR-in-process and CSR-after-process practices on each of all six perspectives of BSC. The findings of this study can point to the reasonable reason why hotels should implement CSR practices into their business strategies. In addition, the study demonstrates that stakeholder theory can explain the effect of CSR practices on corporate performance.