Martin and Moser (2014)

Martin, Patrick R., and Donald V. Moser. “Managers’ Green Investment and Related Disclosure Decisions.” Working paper (Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh), March 16, 2014.

From the authors’ abstract: “We use experimental markets to examine how managers’ disclosures of a particular type of CSR, green investment, affect investors’ bidding behavior. We find that, although in our setting such investments have no impact on future cash flows, investors value knowing that a green investment was made and also respond more favorably to disclosures that focus on the societal benefits of the investment versus on the cost to the company. Managers appear to anticipate investors’ positive reaction, overwhelmingly disclosing when they made a green investment and more often focusing their disclosures on the societal benefits rather than on the cost to the company… [O]ur results show that both investors and managers trade off personal wealth for societal benefits associated with CSR activities and help explain why voluntary CSR disclosures often focus on the benefits to society rather than on the cost to the company.”

Link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1911589