IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v46y2022ipas1544612321003251.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bank debt signalling and corporate sustainability: Does incongruence blur the message?

Author

Listed:
  • Fuente, Gabriel de la
  • Velasco, Pilar

Abstract

This paper examines the interplay between the signalling function of bank debt and other indicators which might reveal incongruence among a firm's actions and question the sincerity of its sustainability engagement. Empirical evidence on a sample of U.S. companies reveals that the presence of bank debt in a firm's leverage improves the performance of sustainability. This beneficial effect of bank debt is greater for the environmental pillar. However, bank debt signalling weakens (or even disappears) in the presence of other indicators that express incongruence, such as a low uniformity in the commitment across sustainability pillars and belonging to a culpable industry. Overall, this study highlights the importance of harmonizing the signal set so that it has an impact on firm value.

Suggested Citation

  • Fuente, Gabriel de la & Velasco, Pilar, 2022. "Bank debt signalling and corporate sustainability: Does incongruence blur the message?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 46(PA).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:46:y:2022:i:pa:s1544612321003251
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2021.102288
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612321003251
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2021.102288?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Will Drover & Matthew S. Wood & Andrew C. Corbett, 2018. "Toward a Cognitive View of Signalling Theory: Individual Attention and Signal Set Interpretation," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 209-231, March.
    2. Epure, Mircea & Guasch, Martí, 2020. "Debt signaling and outside investors in early stage firms," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 35(2).
    3. Spence, Michael, 1974. "Competitive and optimal responses to signals: An analysis of efficiency and distribution," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 296-332, March.
    4. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1997. "Industry costs of equity," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 153-193, February.
    5. Ilya R. P. Cuypers & Ping-Sheng Koh & Heli Wang, 2016. "Sincerity in Corporate Philanthropy, Stakeholder Perceptions and Firm Value," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(1), pages 173-188, February.
    6. Singh, Amanjot, 2020. "COVID-19 and safer investment bets," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 36(C).
    7. Riley, John G., 1975. "Competitive signalling," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 174-186, April.
    8. Henri Servaes & Ane Tamayo, 2013. "The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Firm Value: The Role of Customer Awareness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(5), pages 1045-1061, May.
    9. Demiroglu, Cem & James, Christopher, 2015. "Bank loans and troubled debt restructurings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 192-210.
    10. Glen Dowell & Stuart Hart & Bernard Yeung, 2000. "Do Corporate Global Environmental Standards Create or Destroy Market Value?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(8), pages 1059-1074, August.
    11. Jiao Luo & Aseem Kaul & Haram Seo, 2018. "Winning us with trifles: Adverse selection in the use of philanthropy as insurance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(10), pages 2591-2617, October.
    12. Yang, Ann Shawing & Baasandorj, Suvd, 2017. "Exploring CSR and financial performance of full-service and low-cost air carriers," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 291-299.
    13. Boot, Arnoud W. A., 2000. "Relationship Banking: What Do We Know?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 7-25, January.
    14. Paul C. Godfrey & Craig B. Merrill & Jared M. Hansen, 2009. "The relationship between corporate social responsibility and shareholder value: an empirical test of the risk management hypothesis," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 425-445, April.
    15. Ruchunyi Fu & Yi Tang & Guoli Chen, 2020. "Chief sustainability officers and corporate social (Ir)responsibility," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(4), pages 656-680, April.
    16. JP Vergne & Georg Wernicke & Steffen Brenner, 2018. "Signal Incongruence and Its Consequences: A Study of Media Disapproval and CEO Overcompensation," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(5), pages 796-817, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Saif-Alyousfi, Abdulazeez Y.H. & Saha, Asish & Alshammari, Turki Rashed, 2023. "Bank diversification and ESG activities: A global perspective," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 47(3).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Krüger, Philipp, 2015. "Corporate goodness and shareholder wealth," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(2), pages 304-329.
    2. Qi Ge & Ting Li, 2022. "Corporate social responsibility and shareholder wealth: New insights from information spillovers," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 179-203, February.
    3. Ho, Ly & Bai, Min & Lu, Yue & Qin, Yafeng, 2021. "The effect of corporate sustainability performance on leverage adjustments," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(5).
    4. Yang Liu & Weiqi Dai & Mingqing Liao & Jiang Wei, 2021. "Social Status and Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence from Chinese Privately Owned Firms," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 169(4), pages 651-672, April.
    5. Becchetti, Leonardo & Cucinelli, Doriana & Ielasi, Federica & Rossolini, Monica, 2023. "Corporate social irresponsibility: The relationship between ESG misconduct and the cost of equity," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    6. Li, Chengcheng & Wang, Xiaoqiong, 2022. "Local peer effects of corporate social responsibility," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    7. Kiyoung Chang & Hoje Jo & Ying Li, 2018. "Is there Informational Value in Corporate Giving?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 151(2), pages 473-496, August.
    8. Chowdhury, Hasibul & Hodgson, Allan & Hasan, Mostafa Monzur, 2022. "Does a competitive external labour market affect corporate social responsibility? Evidence from industry tournament incentives," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C).
    9. Li Cai & Chaohua He, 2014. "Corporate Environmental Responsibility and Equity Prices," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 125(4), pages 617-635, December.
    10. Cheung, Yan-Leung & Tan, Weiqiang & Wang, Wenming, 2020. "Where do banks value corporate social responsibility more? Evidence on the role of national culture," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    11. Amrou Awaysheh & Randall A. Heron & Tod Perry & Jared I. Wilson, 2020. "On the relation between corporate social responsibility and financial performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(6), pages 965-987, June.
    12. Hans B. Christensen & Luzi Hail & Christian Leuz, 2021. "Mandatory CSR and sustainability reporting: economic analysis and literature review," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 1176-1248, September.
    13. Sadok El Ghoul & Omrane Guedhami & Hakkon Kim & Kwangwoo Park, 2018. "Corporate Environmental Responsibility and the Cost of Capital: International Evidence," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 149(2), pages 335-361, May.
    14. Orhan Akisik & Graham Gal, 2014. "Financial performance and reviews of corporate social responsibility reports," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 25(3), pages 259-288, December.
    15. Jongwon Park & Sunyoung Kim & Albert Tsang, 2023. "CEO Personal Hedging and Corporate Social Responsibility," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 182(1), pages 199-221, January.
    16. Li Cai & Jinhua Cui & Hoje Jo, 2016. "Corporate Environmental Responsibility and Firm Risk," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 563-594, December.
    17. Vanessa C. Burbano, 2016. "Social Responsibility Messages and Worker Wage Requirements: Field Experimental Evidence from Online Labor Marketplaces," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 1010-1028, August.
    18. Fafaliou, Irene & Giaka, Maria & Konstantios, Dimitrios & Polemis, Michael, 2022. "Firms’ ESG reputational risk and market longevity: A firm-level analysis for the United States," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 161-177.
    19. Shuili Du & Assaad El Akremi & Ming Jia, 2023. "Quantitative Research on Corporate Social Responsibility: A Quest for Relevance and Rigor in a Quickly Evolving, Turbulent World," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(1), pages 1-15, September.
    20. Jared F. Egginton & Garrett A. McBrayer, 2019. "Does it pay to be forthcoming? Evidence from CSR disclosure and equity market liquidity," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(2), pages 396-407, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Signalling theory; Signal incongruence; Bank debt; CSR; Sustainability pillars; Firm value;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:46:y:2022:i:pa:s1544612321003251. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/frl .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.