기부금 지출과 기업 가치 : 기업지배구조를 중심으로

Purpose- Recently, the number of corporations that practiceenvironmental and social responsibility, besides engaging in traditional profit-seeking activities, has been growing steadily, as interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is increasing. Recent research on CSR practices has identified the relationshipbetween CSR activities and corporate value as one of the mainissues in this respect. Considering that donations constitute alarge proportion of a company's charitable activities, we considered the extent of donation expenses as a charitable activity inorder to mitigate sample selection bias. Specifically, we analyzed the impact of donation expenses on firm value, while investigating if this impact varied in response to the level of corporate governance of firms. Research design, data, and methodology-Weusednon-financial firms listed on the Korean Stock Exchange, having theirfiscal year end in December, and the sample period was2006-2013. For the dependent variable, Tobin's q was used asthe corporate value, and for the independent variable, donationswere measured as the donation-expense-to-sales ratio. Corporategovernance scores, as rated by the Korea Corporate GovernanceService, were used to measure corporate governance levels because they consider the overall aspects of governance, includingownership structure, the board of directors, and the audit mechanism of individual companies. To examine the impact of donations on a company in relation to the level of corporate governance, we estimated regression models using the interactionterms of the governance dummy and donation variables. Then, we further estimated the regression models of two sub-samplesthat were classified according to the level of corporategovernance. Similar to previous studies, the study uses variables that affect firm value, such as R&D expenditure, advertisingexpenses, EBITDA, debt-to-equity ratio, sales growth, companyage, and company size as control variables. Results - The empirical results show that firm value significantly increased in response to an increase in donationexpenses. Upon including the interaction terms of governancelevel dummy variables and donations, the coefficients of the interaction terms show significant positive values, while those ofdonation variables show significant negative values. In thestrong governance sub-sample, the relationship between thedonation expenses and corporate value was statistically positive(+) and significant. However, in the weak governance sub-sample, the relationship between the donation expenses and corporate value was statistically insignificant and negative (-). Conclusions- The empirical results suggest that donation expenses are significantly linked to an enhanced corporate value iffirms have a good corporate governance structure. However, ifthe corporate governance structure is weak, the same relationship is not necessarily observed. The results of this study showthat if a firm has high corporate governance, CSR practices enhance the company's reputation such that it has a positive (+)relationship with corporate value. If a firm has weak corporategovernance, on the other hand, CSR practices are recognizedas an agency cost and do not increase corporate value.