Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is vital for sustainable growth, while some companies receive quite

large variations in CSR assessments. Aiming to measure the unmeasurable social responsibility, this

paper investigates the e!ects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its rating divergence on the

future stock price crash risk. We use the divergence of CSR ratings as the outcome uncertainty, and "nd

that conditional on "rms’ CSR performance, future stock price crash risk will increase with the CSR

divergence. Further results show that the moderating e!ect is more pronounced for "rms with weaker

investor protection or higher agency costs. We conclude that "rms with higher CSR divergence have

more severe agency problems, complementary to the CSR literature.