The Role of Moral Judgment and Corporate Social Responsibility in Shaping Investment Decisions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55587/jseb.v1i2.447Kata Kunci:
Corporate social responsibility; expected dividend; investment decision; moral decision making; socially responsible investmentAbstrak
Purpose: This study examines whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) information and investors’ moral decision-making considerations influence investment decisions in an experimental asset market. It also tests whether expected dividend changes the CSR–investment relationship.
Methods: Participants evaluate six fictitious companies—three with strong and three with weak CSR records—using 30 seven-point items representing Multiple Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT), the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), and the Issue-Contingent Model (ICM). They subsequently trade the companies’ shares across three sessions in which expected dividend is experimentally varied. Investment behavior is captured by bid–ask decisions and analyzed using OLS models with a CSR × expected-dividend interaction.
Novelty: The study integrates rational utility, social-norm, and moral-intensity explanations in one market-based design while separating CSR information from financial payoff signals.
Findings: Based on 67 valid participants and 277 recorded transactions, CSR positively affected investment behavior (β = 3.387, p < 0.001), and its interaction with expected dividend was also positive (β = 0.597, p = 0.001). Expected dividend alone was not significant. MAUT showed a positive effect at the 10% level (β = 0.605, p = 0.075), while ICM was positive at the 5% level (β = 0.665, p = 0.043). The CSR model explained 87.9% of the variance, whereas the moral-model equation explained 18.5%. TPB results were not reported in the available statistical chapter.
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