The peer effects of corporate social responsibility in China: A pre-registered study

This study follows the empirical design outlined in the pre-registered report (Ding et al., 2024) to investigate how firms respond to the corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of their peers and explores the potential mechanisms underlying these peer effects, focusing on market competition and institutional pressure. Our findings indicate that peer effects play a significant role in shaping CSR strategies in China. Smaller, younger, less mature firms and those with weaker CSR performance are more susceptible to the influence of their successful peers. This study contributes to the literature on CSR adoption in emerging markets and provides policy implications for optimizing CSR engagement.