Responsible Behavior of Irresponsible Companies: Air Pollution and Charitable Donations of Polluting Companies

Abstract The relationship between air pollution and charitable donations of companies has received little attention from academia. To make up for this defect, we use a regression discontinuity design based on the spatial discontinuity in air pollution created by China's winter heating policy in the north of Qinling Mountains–Huai River line to examine whether severe air pollution may cause polluting companies to make charitable donations. Our results consistently show that air pollution has a positive impact on the donations of polluting companies, regardless of whether the absolute donations, the relative donations, or the willingness to donate are used to measure donations. A series of robustness tests confirm that this relationship is causal. Furthermore, we find that under severe air pollution, the motivations of polluting companies to implement donation behaviors are to decrease the probability of environmental penalties, reduce environmental pollution costs, and decrease the extent to which air pollution affects company reputations.