Religiosity, female directors, and corporate social responsibility for Italian listed companies

Italy is strongly associated with the Catholic Social Teaching (CST) that represents the central principles (doctrine) of the Roman Catholic Church. Using the frequency of words in the papal encyclicals and other writings related to religiosity and gender diversity along with regional demographic and socioeconomic characteristics as instrumental variables for local religiosity and female representation on the board, this study finds positive relationships between religiosity and CSR and between the presence of female directors and CSR for 156 Italian listed companies during the 2002–2014 period. This study also finds that both the top managers' (CEOs') personal religiosity and social pressure from local religiosity play significant roles in firms' CSR performance.