Increasing Burdens or Reducing Costs: Influence of Corporate Social Responsibility on Cost Stickiness

As real enterprises make continued efforts to reduce costs, the capital market raises stricter requirements on their performance of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This paper attempts to disclose the dynamic impact of CSR performance level on the cost stickiness of enterprises, and clarify the mechanism of that influence. Therefore, China’s A-share listed manufacturers in 2010–2019 were taken as the samples, and the relevant data were empirically analyzed by panel data regression models. The results show that, overall, CSR performance is not an immature investment that wastes resources, or hinders corporate cost management; rather, the performance of CSR greatly benefits the cost management of enterprises. Specifically, the CSR suppresses cost stickiness, that is, the higher the performance level, the less sticky the cost. Further analysis shows that agency cost partially mediates the relationship between CSR and cost stickiness. That is, CSR can suppress cost stickiness by reducing the agency cost. Thus, the positive effect of CSR performance is verified from the perspective of cost reduction.