Assessing the Efficacy of Consumer Boycotts of U.S. Target Firms: A Shareholder Wealth Analysis

This article analyzes the effectiveness of 125 U.S. boycotts from 1978 to 2017. On average, the results suggest that actual consumer boycott calls against U.S. target firms (treatment firms) had a negative and statistically significant effect on the shareholder wealth of U.S. target firms. The synthetic control method and the placebo tests confirmed that the negative cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) observed here are robust and not due to...