Are CSR activities associated with shareholder voting in director elections and say-on-pay votes?

When making investment decisions, many investors now regularly consider a company's CSR activities along with traditional financial performance measures (Elliott et al., 2014). Our study considers whether shareholders may also consider CSR activities when voting in director elections and say-on-pay votes. We find that CSR performance is associated with shareholder support in both director elections and say-on-pay votes. In particular, we find higher support for both director elections and executive compensation when there are more CSR strengths. Additionally, we find that the social strength aspect of CSR is the most important component in the relationships between CSR and director elections and that the environmental strengths aspect is the most important component in the relationship between CSR and executive compensation. Our results suggest that shareholders may value certain types of CSR and are more supportive of boards and management when CSR performance is stronger.