Abstract
Regardless of whether we think social responsibility should be a concern of wealth-oriented firms, firms do not operate in a vacuum, but rather are embedded within networks and communities. As such, the norms and values of those networks and communities influence firm behavior. This study examines how a firm's local environment and its community embeddedness influence business social responsibility. We survey the U.S. ethanol industry and examine refineries' community support efforts as a measure of social responsibility. The study speaks to the institutional and social responsibility literatures and finds that while a firm's community embeddedness positively influences its community support, business density and metropolitan status negatively influence it.