은행의 사회책임활동(CSR) 몰입수준과 경영성과: 가시성의 조절 효과를 중심으로

Unlike ordinary companies, banks are a monopolistic and regulated industry that is bothprotected and monitored by the government. Because of these industry characteristics, financialcompanies are required to pursue social responsibility activities as well as to pursue profits to increasestakeholder trust and ensure fair trade. However, despite these demands, there is a lack of CSR researchin banks, and most previous studies are limited to the manufacturing industry.Therefore, this study is to confirm whether 1) positive relations between CSR activitiesand financial performance of companies that have been widely agreed in general are also shownin studies targeting domestic general banks, and 2) empirically confirm whether there is a differencebetween the CSR activities performed by the bank on its own and under institutional pressures, andconsider which CSR activities affects financial performance more significantly. Specifically, this paperaims to empirically examine how visibility moderates the relationship between CSR activities andfinancial performance.This study matched the bank's CSR activity data with that of Data Analysis, Retrievaland Transfer System(DART)'s financial data from 2010 to 2017. 83 observations were collected finally, and a Random-effect GLS regression was conducted. As a result of empirical analysis, only activeCSR has a positive relationship to financial performance and the banks with high visibility confirmedthat the positive relationship between active CSR activities and financial performance was strengthened.Based on the results of this study, some contributions and implications are discussed. First, because of different financial statements, many existing CSR studies have not considered the banking industry, however, this study contributed to the generalization of CSR research by conducting researchon banks. The impact of CSR activities on corporate performance is still mixed. Therefore, this studyreduced the ambiguity of CSR by classifying the bank's CSR activities into active CSR and passiveCSR. Only active CSR activities were found to have a positive effect on the performance of thecompany. In other words, we confirmed that the classification of CSR is empirically meaningful byfinding out that active CSR activities have more positive impact on financial performance.Second, this study used data on CSR activities reported by banks in a common formatin the [Corporate Citizenship Report] published by the 'Korea Federation of Banks'. By using moreobjective quantitative data as CSR measurements, we extended the breadth of CSR measurementscompared to previous studies.Finally, the more visible the bank, the stronger the active CSR activities have been.Customers demand high trust and high social responsibility from high visibility banks than low visibilitybanks. If the demand is not met, the high visibility banks's financial performance is lower than thatof the bank with low visibility, which is a result of failing to meet the expectations of consumers.In other words, the more visible the bank, the need to carry out active social responsibility activities.