Abstract: Corporate social responsibility reports released by the management can transmit information about the efficiency of corporate social responsibility activities. Its reliability is identified by the professional party's corporate social information attestation opinion. These attestation opinions provide useful information for external stakeholder's investment decisions. Based on the signaling theory and the database of Chinese listed firms during 2008~2013, this paper examines whether the corporate social responsibility report attestation issued by the professional party can provide incrementally useful information to investors. We find that the cost of equity capital is significantly and negatively associated with the corporate social responsibility report attestation opinion issued by the professional party. Further analyses reveal that negative relationship between the cost of equity capital and the corporate social responsibility report attestation opinion issued by professional party is more pronounced for firms with greater information asymmetry and with worse financial performance. This paper enriches the research on economic consequences of corporate social responsibility report attestation, and can help policy makers to better improve corporate social responsibility report disclosure regulations as well.

Key words: Corporate Social Responsibility Report Attestation, Cost of Equity Capital, Transparency of Financial Information

摘要： 管理层披露的社会责任报告能够传递企业社会责任表现信息,有助于企业外部利益相关者的决策,而由第三方专业机构出具的鉴证意见则是对管理层所披露社会责任信息可靠性的保证。本文以2008~2013年间沪深A股上市公司发布的社会责任报告为样本,基于信号传递理论,从权益资本成本角度考察了社会责任报告鉴证是否可以为投资者提供有用的信息。研究结果表明,社会责任报告经过第三方专业机构鉴证公司的权益资本成本相对较低。进一步研究发现,在财务信息透明度较低、财务业绩较差的公司中,进行社会责任报告鉴证具有更低的权益资本成本。本文的研究结论丰富了社会责任报告鉴证经济后果方面的文献,同时对政策制定者进一步完善企业社会责任报告披露制度具有一定的参考价值。

关键词: 社会责任报告鉴证, 权益资本成本, 财务信息透明度