ABSTRACT

This study examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance for a sample of lodging and gaming companies. The study attempts to answer the question: do lodging and gaming companies ranked highly on CSR initiatives outperform their counterparts that are not highly ranked? The study utilizes data of publicly traded U.S. hospitality firms obtained from the CRSP and Mergent databases. The study also uses the Fortune CSR ranking survey for hotels and casinos. The findings suggest that lodging and gaming firms with well-executed CSR initiatives have higher profit margins and higher return on equity than the rest of the sampled firms.