This article analyzes the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) decoupling and financial market outcomes. CSR decoupling refers to the gap between CSR disclosure and CSR performance. More specifically, we analyze the effect of CSR decoupling on analysts’ forecast errors, cost of capital, and access to finance. We also examine the moderating effect of forecast errors on relationships between CSR decoupling and cost of capital and access to finance. For a sample of U.S. firms consisting of 7,681 firm-year observations for the period 2006–2015, our empirical evidence supports the idea that a wider gap results in higher analysts’ forecast errors, a greater cost of capital, and reduced access to finance. In addition, our results show that forecast errors enhance the effect of the CSR decoupling on cost of capital and access to financial resources. We also note that external monitoring, in the form of greater analysts’ coverage, reduces CSR decoupling.

a b s t r a c tMobility represents a relevant topic from the standpoint of environmental degradation, health-related consequences and social inclusion. Since private mobility is responsible for the greatest share of polluting emissions, it is necessary to gain deeper understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the choice of individuals to use either cars or alternative, environment-friendly transport modes. A meta-analysis on 58 primary studies is conducted to synthesize evidence on the determinants of travel mode choice, as regards both behavioral intentions and actual behaviors. Results suggest that, besides intentions, habits and past use represent the most relevant predictor, followed by constructs referring to the Theory of Planned Behavior framework. Environmental variables, on the other hand, play a relevant role in shaping behavioral intentions while their effect on actual behaviors is negligible, so that a deep intention behavior gap emerges. A moderator analysis is performed to explain the high heterogeneity in the results. Behaviors' operationalization and measurement emerges as the moderator affecting heterogeneity of outcomes the most; trip purpose, sample type and year of the study also show a moderate effect on heterogeneity, while location does not appear to be a relevant moderator.

Many studies have examined the direct relationship between the two corporate practices: corporate social responsibility (CSR) and earnings management (EM); however, the results remain heterogeneous. To achieve the consensus, this study builds upon the classical agency theory and examines the role of managerial entrenchment in creating organizational facades related to CSR and EM. More specifically, it examines the relationship between CSR performance and EM in the presence of managerial entrenchment and the direct effect of managerial entrenchment on CSR decoupling. In doing so, this article provides evidence of a previously underappreciated yet fundamentally important aspect, that is, managerial entrenchment, that may significantly affect the quality of earnings as well as the level of alignment between CSR disclosure and performance. Our analyses of longitudinal data of an international sample for the period of 2007–2016 supports that managerial entrenchment significantly moderates the relationship between CSR performance and EM. Furthermore, our study reveals that entrenched managers decouple CSR disclosure and performance.

This article examines the effects of various internal (board independence, gender diversity, and specialized sustainability committee) and external (analysts' coverage and institutional ownership) corporate governance mechanisms on firms' decision to purchase external assurance for their corporate social responsibility (CSR) report. Using an international sample, we show that board diversity, the existence of a CSR committee, analysts' coverage, and institutional investors increase the probability of assuring a CSR report, while board independence decreases it. The findings further suggest that several configurations of these mechanisms complement each other in improving the credibility of nonfinancial disclosure through assurance. However, other configurations do not work in tandem, supporting the existence of substitution effects. Overall, bundling various governance mechanisms effectively could be more useful in formulating and implementing a corporate strategy than individual mechanisms.