The clear economic, social and environmental implications of the agri‑food sector, and the significant public scrutiny to which it is subjected, highlight the need to promote and strengthen corporate social responsibility practices in this sector. This paper analyses the relationship between corporate social responsibility and the financial performance of companies in the agri‑food sector, with a specific interest in understanding the role of image and reputation in this relationship. Using the stakeholder theory, corporate social responsibility is considered as a broad and multidimensional concept that includes the following dimensions: employees, partners, customers, farmers, environment, community and competition. The Almeria agri‑food sector is used as the context of study and the model is tested by applying the partial least squares technique (PLS‑SEM) on data collected through a survey of a sample of 107 marketing companies. The results show that corporate social responsibility has a positive effect on the financial performance of companies in the sector. This effect is largely due to the significant positive impact it has on image and reputation.

Martos‑Pedrero A, Jiménez‑Castillo D, Cortés‑García FJ (2022). La responsabilidad social empresarial y el desempeño financiero en el sector agroalimentario: efecto mediador de la imagen y reputación. ITEA‑Información Técnica Económica Agraria 118(3): 453-475. https://doi.org/10.12706/itea.2021.035