In family firms we trust – Experimental evidence on the credibility of sustainability reporting: A replication study with extension

This study takes a fresh look at the credibility of corporate communication in family firms, as compared to corporate communication in non-family firms, in voluntary sustainability reporting. In his pioneering work Hsueh (2018) discovered that family firms suffer from a credibility disadvantage in terms of their sustainability reporting efforts, from the point of view of external stakeholders. This is called the ‘credibility gap’. This finding however is in stark contrast to the superior trust attribution of external stakeholders towards family firms in the general family firm literature. Our replication study shows that indeed, family firms do not suffer from a credibility gap compared to their non-family firm counterparts. In fact, in our experimental extension we can show that family firms, when perceived as such, are considered to be benevolent, which in turn increases the credibility of their sustainability reporting from an external perspective. Thus, contrary to the original study by Hsueh (2018), we suggest that family firms have a credibility advantage over non-family firms when it comes to their sustainability reporting. Furthermore, our results suggest that this credibility advantage remains, even when tested with specific stakeholder roles (customers, job-seekers), and that it ultimately influences their interactions with the firm positively.