The corporate social responsibility overview.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a tool for companies to show their commitment towards social issues when the corporate involvement could strengthen the continuity and company’s operation while at the same time to show their existence in the community. Essentially, CSR is corporate involvement in social activities in which their role is very important to improve the quality of social life in terms of education, health and environmental sustainability

Willingness to pay for environmental conservation: subsidy reduction as a payment vehicle

The objective of the study is to test whether the subsidy reduction of daily consumer goods as a payment vehicle can influence individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental and nature conservation. Specifically, it assessed the impact of price sensitivity on the willingness to conserve wetlands, using the subsidy reduction approach. Malaysia’s Setiu Wetland (SW) served as a case study to gauge respondents’ preferences to trade-off the benefits of subsidy with conservation of natural resources. The welfare economic concept of WTP was applied to estimate the economic value of SW with the application of choice experiment method. Analysis using the Random Parameter Logit model showed that respondent’s WTP for conserving SW, through subsidies reduction, amount to RM120.59 annually. The price sensitivity in the model is high, suggesting that respondents are greatly concerned about the monetary attribute. This further implies that subsidy reduction can be a most consequential and coercive payment for Stated Preference studies. Thorough assessment of the payment structure is crucial for the quality of environmental value research in developing economies when conventional methods may not be ideal. It is recommended that policymakers consider other alternatives as payment vehicles for environmental conservation to ensure broader support for conservation initiatives

Asymmetric Effect of Market Sentiment on Banking: A Nonlinear ARDL Approach

This study explores the asymmetric impact of market sentiment on commercial bank deposits over long-run and short-run periods. Two attitude-based sentiments, the business condition index (BCI) and the consumer sentiment index (CSI) are used to proxy the market sentiment. By utilizing the Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) method on Malaysian data, the study found the existence of long-run and short-run asymmetric impact of market sentiment on bank deposit flow. Empirical results show that negative changes in market sentiment appear to affect bank deposits significantly in the long run while positive changes in the market sentiment show otherwise. This phenomenon would partially suggest that households might gone through a difficult phase such as job losses and rely on their saving to survive. Income and money supply, amongst other variables, demonstrate a long-run positive relationship with bank deposits, whereas interest rate has a long-run significant negative relationship. Results from NARDL also show that exchange rate, money supply, interest rate, income, and negative changes in BCI and CSI have a short-run effect on deposits. Overall, our study confirms the behavioural finance hypothesis which claims human behaviour affects financial decisions. The government should implement specific measures to reduce the impact of negative sentiment, as an increase in negative sentiment indicates households are likely to withdraw their deposit. Consequently, this phenomenon would affect household savings during their retirement age. Thus, the government should take the initiative or provide incentives to households during a hard time to cushion the impact of bad market sentiment

The Influence of Economic Development and Government Investment on Pro-Environmental Behavior in China

China’s pollution problem continues to worsen because of the nation’s rapid economic expansion. To improve the environment, governments need to allocate resources to environmental initiatives, enforce regulations, and facilitate collaboration in environmental management with public participation. This study analyzes the differences in Chinese public participation in environmental protection between the private and public spheres using the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) 2021. Multiple regression is employed to investigate the factors influencing Chinese pro-environmental behavior and to explore the connection between pro-environmental behavior, government investment, and economic development. The research shows that economic development has a favorable impact on pro-environmental behavior in the private sector. Government work effectiveness positively influences pro-environmental behavior, whereas government pollution governance in the public realm adversely impacts it. Economic development influences government pollution governance and the public’s pro-environmental behavior. Various elements, such as individual characteristics, the external environment, and social psychological components, have different levels of impact on the public’s pro-environmental behavior. The results will enhance understanding of Chinese environmental behaviors, enabling the creation of more effective policies to boost public participation and improve environmental management in China

Estimating expenditure pattern and permanent income hypothesis : evidence from Kelantan Malaysia

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the consumption function among households in Kelantan Malaysia based on the Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH). This study used secondary data obtained from annual reports, as well as from published and non-published data between 2000 and 2016. The ARDL bound testing approach to deal with cointegration was applied to estimate the long run correlation between the variables. Meanwhile, the error correction method (ECM) was used to determine any short run correlation. This study found a large disparity between the elasticity to consume from current income and the elasticity to consume from permanent income among households in Kelantan. Therefore, it can be concluded that in the case of Kelantan, the PIH is valid