Measuring the impact of 3Ps of sustainability and innovation development of circular economy on corporate social responsibility performance: evidence from polluted Chinese listed companies

The businesses are becoming more committed towards Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) implementation. Also, the Circular Economy (CE) approach has become more prevalent as a growth strategy. This article aims to investigate the impact of people, ecological productivity (planet), economic efficiency (profits), and research and development (R&D) of the CE model on CSR performance in China’s highly polluting sectors. Data are collected from two datasets, including Bloomberg and China Wind databases. This study selects panel data from 2906 listed polluted Chinese companies from 2015 to 2020. The study constructed a multiple-fixed effect model to meet the research aim. The empirical results show that listed companies’ economic efficiency (profits) has no significant impact on CSR performance. In addition, the social dimension (people), ecological productivity (planet), and innovation development (R&D) have significantly had a positive impact on the CE model and CSR performance.