Corporate social responsibility disclosure and corporate creditworthiness: Evidence from the UK

This study investigates the way in which corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices are perceived by the U.K. bond market. In this respect, we distinguish between the two ambiguous subdimensions – that is, CSR disclosure and CSR performance. We analysed the association between CSR disclosure and the cost of corporate bonds by means of a multi‐theoretical framework combining economics with social theories. We also examine the moderating effect of the CSR performance on this relationship. We estimate a random‐effects GLS regression and random‐effects ordered probit regression using a sample of companies belonging to the FTSE 100 index during the 2013–2017 period. We find that bondholders and credit rating agencies incorporate CSR disclosure into their assessment and evaluation of the firms' creditworthiness. Mainly, our results show that bondholders encourage and value CSR reporting primarily for companies with weak CSR performance, but stop doing so once the company reach a certain level of CSR performance. We further examined each CSR disclosure subdimension and aspects of corporate creditworthiness through a disaggregated analysis. Both environmental and community relations disclosures are significant in corporate creditworthiness, whereas only responsibility disclosure is related to credit ratings. Finally, results highlight that disclosure of CSR information is especially relevant to financially healthy firms. Our findings have several implications for academics, practitioners, and policymakers in understanding the consequences of CSR disclosure and CSR performance on bond markets and credit rating.