近幾年，不管是實務界或是學術界，企業社會責任的概念不斷被倡導與討論，然而，永續議題多元繁雜，營利事業在考量成本效益下，應該優先對哪些議題進行投資呢？為探討此議題，本研究以企業社會責任績效對權益資金成本的影響作為測試，選用美國上市櫃公司為樣本，並以 KLD 指數作為企業社會責任績效的代理變數，參酌 Khan,Serafeim, 及 Yoon,(2016)的方法，依照 SASB 永續會計準則的產業別重大永續議題，
將 KLD 指數分類為重大及非重大分數後，分別以原始、重大、非重大 KLD 分數跑迴歸，在控制了系統性風險、公司規模、淨值市值比、負債比率、分析師預測的分散度這些預期會影響權益資金成本的變數後，實證結果發現，企業社會責任績效與權益資金成本為顯著反向關係，且顯著性來自於投資於重大永續議題的企業社會責任績效，投資於非重大永續議題的企業社會責任績效則不顯著，顯示企業社會責任績效好的公司，能享受較低的權益資金成本，但對永續議題進行投資時，必須考量該產業的重大永續議題，若都投資於非重大永續議題，則無法享受較低的權益資金成本，另一方面，因為 SASB 永續會計準則近幾年才發布，其所制定出的永續重大議題準則是否能夠幫助企業聚焦於真正重要的永續議題，本研究亦提供驗證。

This paper further investigates the relationship between corporate social responsibility performance and the cost of equity capital for public-listed firms in U.S. By decomposing the KLD score into materiality performance score and immaterial performance score, I run the regression in three different models. The empirical results show that firms with better corporate social responsibility performance exhibit cheaper equity financing. Further, firms with good ratings on material sustainability issues significantly exhibit cheaper equity financing than firms with poor ratings on these issues.

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