Recently, an increasing number of Japanese companies have developed environmental reports and voluntarily disclosed sustainability reports or environmental and social reports. These reports are known generally as CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) reports. This paper empirically investigates the determinant of the quality of CSR reports by Japanese companies based on a
stakeholder approach (Freeman 1984) . Especially this paper investigates whether corporate strategic attitudes toward social responsibility activities and individual investors affect the quality of CSR reports. Then this paper demonstrates that the bigger companies appear to have better quality of CSR reports, and that companies with higher Corporate Social Performance (CSP) appear to have better quality of CSR reports. This paper also demonstrates that companies belong to particular industries which are familiar to consumers or could terribly affect society and environment appear to have better quality of CSR reports, even though there is limited evidence. This paper additionally demonstrates that companies, which have introduced shareholder special benefit plans, appear to have better quality of CSR reports. This evidence is consistent with and empirically supports the view of companies based on a
stakeholder approach.
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