Caring or Pretending to Care? Social Impact, Firms' Objectives and Welfare

Abstract

Many firms claim that "social impact" influences their strategies. I develop a structural model that quantifies social impact as the sum of the surpluses to a firm and its stakeholders. Using data from a for-profit firm whose prosocial expenditures are measurable and salient to consumers, I find that the firm spends prosocially beyond profit-maximization, which substantially increases welfare. Incentivizing a standard profit-maximizing firm to behave similarly would require subsidies for 55% of the prosocial expenditures because consumers' willingness-to-pay is relatively inelastic to prosocial expenses. Therefore, social impact resembles a self-imposed welfare-enhancing tax with limited pass-through.