Industrial accidents: The mediating effect of corporate social responsibility and environmental policy measures

Using a novel hand-collected sample including 159 industrial events that occurred between 2000 and 2020, we document that corporate social performance (CSP) generally acts as a halo effect mitigating the stock market drop following these events. These findings, robust to many alternative specifications, provide novel evidence shedding light on how corporate social capital acts as a mitigating device against the consequences of tail events. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first studies investigating the mitigation role of CSP in the aftermath of an industrial accident by analyzing a large global sample of industrial incidents. The practical and theoretical implications of our findings are at the bottom of that form of a socially normative corporate force embedded in social trust, smoothing managers' and stakeholders' interests together.