Corporate social responsibility and geographic dispersion

Using a sample of U.S. listed firms from 1994 to 2015, we examine how the geographic dispersion of a firm affects corporate social responsibility (CSR). We find that corporate geographic dispersion is negatively associated with CSR scores. We further find that this robust negative relationship is more pronounced for firms located in the small communities, which is consistent with the social interaction explanation. A Heckman test shows that the results hold when we control for endogeneity between geographical dispersion and CSR. Our paper provides evidence that local firms may better protect their stakeholders than geographically dispersed firms.