Making amends or downplaying? The impact of ESG incidents on boilerplate disclosure of CSR reports in Chinese companies

This study measures boilerplate disclosure (BD) of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports published by Chinese companies using natural language processing (NLP) technology, and then investigates the impact of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) incidents on BD of CSR reports. The results indicate that companies experiencing ESG incidents tend to reduce BD to save their reputation. Further analysis shows that more detailed CSR reports are truly helpful for firms to obtain higher ESG ratings.