Isolating the Effect of Social Risk on MNEs’ CSR Reporting: A New Approach Based on China's Belt & Road Initiative

This article highlights CSR disclosure as a strategic response of Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) to the social risk they face in host countries. Deviating from prior research that aims to directly measure social risk, we offer a new approach to isolate the effect of social risk by leveraging China's Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) as the research context, under which Chinese MNEs are largely protected from political risk in membership countries but are exposed to substantial social risk from local nongovernment stakeholders. Results from difference-in-differences analyses show that after the enactment of the BRI, Chinese MNEs investing in BRI countries significantly increases their likelihood of CSR disclosure than that of their counterparts investing in non-BRI countries. Further, such effects are more pronounced for state-owned MNEs and MNEs in natural resource industries. This research enriches the international business literature on the relationship between political risk and social risk, and that between corporate political actions and corporate social responsibility.