The protective role of corporate social responsibility performance during the coronavirus pandemic disease: Performance evaluation using a mathematical model of the directional distance function

The outbreak of coronavirus worldwide has created many problems for companies. Companies are looking for a suitable solution to overcome this crisis. One of the measures that can reduce the negative effects of this crisis is the expansion of corporate social responsibility(CSR) activities. The purpose of this study was to investigate the protective role of the performance of CSR activities from stock returns and its effect on shareholder attention during coronary heart disease. This study is an event study that is considered for a period of six months from the beginning of the outbreak of coronavirus in Iran (February 2020) to the end of August 2020. The data analysis was performed using Eviews software and information of 33 sample member companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange, in three industries: pharmaceutical, food, and transportation, by least squares regression (OLS) method. The results show that the performance of CSR activities related to community indicators, employee relations, and human rights in the event periods have a positive role on the corporate stock returns and other activities do not play an effective role. The results also show that the performance of CSR has a positive and significant effect on the attention of shareholders. Using the obtained results, it can be concluded that corporations can attract stakeholders and protect the value of the companies by increasing the performance of CSR activities, especially in the community, employee relations, and human rights during the coronavirus pandemic disease period.