Banca de DEFESA: POLLIANY LIMA SILVA

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND MEDIA VISIBILITY: DONATIONS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND THE MARKET VALUE OF COMPANIES

Social responsibility. Donations. Pandemic. Search Trends.

Studies in behavioral finance are beginning to focus their efforts on understanding how online audiences react to these ads and how this influences financial decisions. However, there is a knowledge gap in the literature on public perceptions of social responsibility advertisements using online search trends. Likewise, the findings indicating that socially responsible companies were chosen in preference to other companies during the Covid-19 pandemic are still dubious. With a view to studying the perception of stakeholders regarding donation announcements during the pandemic, this study had the general objective of investigating whether, during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, donor companies achieved market value and growth in greater media visibility than non-donor companies. The Market Value variable was negative in the period, consistent with the literature that reinforces that the financial effects associated with CSR scores last for a few days, not being maintained in the long term in periods of serious crisis. Thus, there is support for rejection of H1. On the other hand, the rejection of the hypothesis does not nullify the achievement of the research objectives, since the same variable was positive considering the period in which there was no pandemic. It is also worth noting that the robustness variable for stock returns was positive for companies that announced donations during the pandemic, which denotes that the donation produced positive effects during the pandemic, albeit in the short term. As for the second hypothesis of the research based on media visibility, there was no statistical significance when the pandemic effect was applied, not obtaining confidence to reject or not H2. Despite this factor, the results for the visibility variable were positive in the absence of the pandemic effect, which is consistent with studies that demonstrate a link between social initiatives and affective responses on the part of consumers. Overall findings indicate a trend that corporate philanthropy, driven by donations, generally helps companies achieve public legitimacy and financial performance. However, the severe effect of the pandemic did not allow the market to significantly absorb the financial return and visibility. The unavailability of data on donations is mentioned as a limitation, with no structural obligation in financial reports and no standardization. Another limitation is the lack of agreement in several literatures on the end of the pandemic, not allowing an analysis of its 'post'. It is suggested for future research to use the same sample in order to control more effects of the peaks of the pandemic such as the announcement of the lockdown, vaccine effect, economic measures adopted by the government, among others. In summary, the objective of the study and the research problem were met, in order to reinforce that social responsibility and the announcement of donations in general in isolation bring benefits, but failing to prove these effects during the pandemic in a significant way