Does Firms' Dissemination of Corporate Social Responsibility Information through Facebook Matter for Corporate Reputation?

This paper examines the impact of firms' dissemination of corporate social responsibility (CSR) information through Facebook on corporate reputation. We investigate this relationship empirically by using a corporate reputation index that tracks nonprofessional stakeholders' daily perceptions of corporate reputation over time. We find that firms disclosing CSR information on Facebook experience a decrease in reputation. If we differentiate Facebook postings based on whether their content provides environmental or social information, we only find a negative effect on reputation for firms posting social information (quality effect). However, reputation is not affected by the number of CSR postings (quantity effect).