**3.1 Sample and data collection**

Our sample consists of French SBF120 listed firms from the year 2008 to 2017. The final sample includes 88 French companies. We are base on a balanced panel dataset of 880 firm-year observations. We used secondary data drawn from the Thomson Reuters Inc. database on the French companies in our sample.

The choice of the period analysis coincides with the adoption of the Grenelle1 law which makes the production of annual CSR report mandatory for all large companies. This period also coincides with the dissemination of the main codes of governance in France. Furthermore, the analysis period of 10 years makes it possible to constitute a fairly large panel which enriches the results and improves the estimates and econometric tests. The SBF120 index includes the 120 largest companies in terms of market capitalization and trading volumes on the Euronext Paris market. These large companies, mostly groups, remain very "visible" when it comes to their societal achievements and are subject to permanent "monitoring" by societal rating organizations, media, and investors. It should be noted that companies with a lot of missing data were also removed from the sample.
