Premium
Do local social norms affect investors’ involvement in social activism? Revisiting the case of US institutional investors
Author(s) -
Cahan Steven F.,
Chen Chen,
Chen Li
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
accounting and finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.645
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-629X
pISSN - 0810-5391
DOI - 10.1111/acfi.12649
Subject(s) - institutional investor , affect (linguistics) , shareholder , contrast (vision) , social trust , business , political science , social capital , corporate governance , sociology , finance , law , communication , artificial intelligence , computer science
Prior evidence suggests that, in contrast to European investors, local norms related to environmental and social (E&S) beliefs do not affect the willingness of US institutional investors to push for E&S improvements in US firms. We revisit this issue except, instead of measuring E&S social norms at the country level, we allow E&S social norms to vary between states. We find that the shareholdings of non‐local US institutional investors from states with strong E&S social norms are positively related to E&S‐related shareholder activism, indicating that local E&S social norms do matter for US institutional investors.