Prosocial imprint: CEO childhood famine experience and corporate philanthropic donation

The influence of CEOs’ early life experiences on their strategic decisions has attracted considerable research attention. However, existing studies have limited understanding of its influence on firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. In this study, based on imprinting and upper echelons theories, we propose that CEOs who have experienced famine during their childhood are more likely to make a high level of philanthropic donations. Furthermore, we investigated boundary conditions that facilitate or impede the relationship between CEOs’ childhood famine experience and philanthropic donations based on the resource dependence view. We tested our theoretical model using the sample of publicly listed firms in China. By conducting difference-in-differences analyses, we found that CEOs who experienced famine in childhood between 7 and 11 years old tend to increase their firms’ donation level, and this positive relationship is amplified when the firm is relatively large and weakened when the CEO is female. Implications and limitations also are discussed.