Corporate social responsibility, social identity, and innovation performance in China

Abstract This study investigates the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate innovation performance for Chinese listed companies, with a particular focus on social identity theory. We demonstrate that CSR contributes to the improvement of corporate innovation performance only when a company is recognized by society as consistently exhibiting good CSR performance. By contrast, companies not engaged in CSR practices have less corporate innovation. These results are more pronounced in high technology-intensive and poor CSR performance industries. Overall, our findings provide support for social identity theory in explaining the relationship between CSR and corporate innovation performance.