Local religiosity, workplace safety, and firm value

Authors

Md Ruhul Amin, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Incheol Kim, The University of Texas Rio Grande ValleyFollow
Suin Lee, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-2021

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of local religiosity on employee treatment, proxied by workplace safety incidents. Using the establishment-level data compiling on the incidents of work-related injuries, we find that employees of the establishments in more religious counties get less injured than those in less religious counties. We further find that a reduction in occupational accidents is more evident for establishments in counties dominated by one religious denomination, strengthening our argument on community solidarity and homophily stemming from religious networks. Firms whose establishments are located in high religiosity counties are less likely to violate workplace conduct and more likely to take workplace safety measures. Moreover, firms with more work-related injuries exhibit poorer firm performance. Overall, our findings suggest that local religiosity has a value implication through human capital protection.

Comments

Original published version available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2021.102093

Recommended Citation

Amin, M.R., Kim, I., Lee, S., 2021. Local religiosity, workplace safety, and firm value. Journal of Corporate Finance 70, 102093. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2021.102093

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Publication Title

Journal of Corporate Finance

DOI

10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2021.102093