The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Dividend Policy: The Role of Internationalization

• Main Authors: HSIAO, MENG-FANG, 蕭孟芳
• Other Authors: CHUANG, YA-HSUEH
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/n58t95

碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 財務金融學系 === 107 === This study investigates how internationalization affects the relationship between CSR and dividend policy. The research period is from 2005 to 2017, and an empirical analysis is conducted on a total of 2,725 samples from 645 listed companies in Taiwan. The empirical results show that CSR and dividend policy are positively correlated, indicating that companies with active CSR engagements tend to pay more cash dividends. Moreover, regardless of companies with CSR awards or companies with positive CSR engagements, they both pay more cash dividends. On the contrary, companies with corporate social irresponsibility pay fewer cash dividends. Next, we include alternative variables of internationalization to explore the relationships among CSR, dividend policy and internationalization. The empirical results find that internationalization has a particularly negative effect on cash dividends for companies with active CSR engagements, companies with CSR awards, and companies with positive CSR engagements. This indicates that internationalization has a moderating effect on dividend policy. As the degree of international development increases, companies must retain more cash to cope with future uncertainties, which further reduces the distribution of dividends. On the other hand, in order to maintain the international corporate image, companies with corporate social irresponsibility tend to mitigate the decline in cash dividends. In conclusion, internationalization has different moderating effects on dividend policy with different levels of CSR engagements. Findings above, to the best of our knowledge, are among the first in literature.