The Impact of Board materialism on Corporate Social Responsibility

Despite the important role that corporate social responsibility plays in the decision-making of capital market players, it seems that it has always been influenced by the behavioral characteristics of the board. Materialism has not been considered to assess the behavioral characteristics of the board of directors and no research has been conducted in this field in the country so far. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of board materialism on corporate social responsibility. The corporate social responsibility variable was measured by the Carol's social responsibility checklist (1998) and the materialism variable was measured by the standard Richins and Dawson (1992) questionnaire. To conduct this research, 109 companies for a period of 6 years between 2016 to 2021 in the Tehran Stock Exchange were surveyed as a statistical sample. The research hypotheses were analyzed using data panel regression and combined regression in EViews10 software. Multivariate linear regression model and cross-sectional data were used to test the hypothesis. Findings show that the materialism of the board of directors has a significant effect on corporate social responsibility. The materialism of the board does not affect the financial responsibility of the company. The materialism of the board of directors has a negative and significant effect on the legal responsibility of the company. The materialism of the board affects the ethical responsibility of the company. The materialism of the board of directors has a negative and significant effect on the benevolent (humanitarian) responsibility of the company.