Research On The Influence Of CSR Performance On Investment Intention Of Individual Investors And The Mediation Mechanism

China's economy is currently in an important transition period of reform and development,and the role of social responsibility performance of listed companies in the securities market is still controversial.For a long time,there has been a paradox between human-centered management and scientific management in the academic circle,and the view that Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR)is unreasonable in the capital market.However,as more and more listed companies in recent years have been releasing their CSR reports,part of state-owned enterprises and private enterprises pay more and more attention to the fulfillment of social responsibility and disclosure.Also,due to the outburst of social problems,such as food safety,environmental pollution,labor rights,these problems frequently cause the phenomenon that the stock price of listed companies has been cut in half in the stock market,and this phenomenon indicates the effectiveness of CSR in the capital market.On the other hand,enterprise managers still lack effective theoretical guidance on how to undertake social responsibility in practical management practice.The competition for capital among enterprises is ultimately the competition for investors.In an actual investment decision-making process,as the main force of investment,will individual investors consider the non-financial performance indicators of enterprises while paying attention to the financial status and economic benefits of enterprises? To what extent can an enterprise's non-financial performance affect investors' investment decisions? On the other hand,what kind of social responsibility information should a listed company present to win the goodwill and trust of investors and thus trigger their positive investment tendency? Contrarily,what kind of social responsibility information should a listed company present to win the goodwill and trust of investors and thus trigger their positive investment tendency?Although previous studies have verified the usefulness of social responsibility information for investment decisions from different perspectives,although they are helpful for us to understand the relationship between social responsibility performance and investment intention and its "black box",but they are still insufficient,and the research conclusions are inconsistent: First,there is little research studying the after-effects of CSR economy from the perspective of individual investors.Most previous studies have focused on the impact of CSR on institutional investors' shareholding.Secondly,the research on the intermediary influence mechanism of CSR on individual investors and the psychological reaction process of individual investors to CSR responsibility is still very limited.Third,from the perspective of behavioral finance,the research on Micro-CSR is just beginning to emerge.The research responded to the demands of Rupp and Mallory(2015)on Micro-CSR,as well as the demands of Moser and Martin(2012)on experimental research.Fourth,relevant research conclusions are still inconsistent,and the effectiveness of CSR on the capital market is still in doubt.Therefore,this topic is worthy of further study,and the practice of CSR ability in the capital market urgently needs effective theoretical guidance.For these reasons,this paper combines social performance and financial performance for the first time and explores their mutual effects on investment decisions from the micro-level.Specifically,based on the theory of dual processing with H-V moral theory framework,starting from the perspective of behavioral finance,this article is attempting to build an overall conceptual model including CSR performance,enterprise financial performance,investors moral emotion,investors moral cognition(deontological evaluation and teleological evaluation),and individual investors investment intention.This model aims for a comprehensive investigation of the influence of CSR performance on individual investor's investment intention and its action mechanism and further investigates the joint influence of CSR performance and financial performance on individual investor's investment intention and the mediating mechanism generated in the process.This research adopts the method of combining qualitative research and quantitative research to conduct empirical tests on the research problems.The three studies carried out a demonstration in a progressive manner:First of all,Study I(interview study)is an exploratory study,which aims to explore whether individual investors will consider the social performance of listed companies in the real investment decision-making process from the perspective of the real world.Besides,the connotation and dimension of variables to be studied are explored and verified.At the same time,it further reveals the changes of individual investors' psychological perception in the process of investment decision-making,as well as their feelings and understandings on whether enterprises undertake social responsibility or not,to implement exploratory investigation on the underlying motivations,attitudes,and emotions of the research problems.In this part,a qualitative semi-structured interview method is combined with quantitative structured interview method to preliminarily clarify the logical relationship between variables and the connotation of the relationship structure,while ensuring the universality and external validity of the research conclusion.As a pilot study,the results of the interview study not only laid a foundation for the construction of the next theoretical framework and the proposal of the model hypothesis but also provided research materials and theoretical support for the subsequent design of the situation experiment.Then,Study II(situational experiment research)is based on the results of exploratory interviews and relevant literature review and theoretical analysis,it deduces and proposes the variables and their relationships in the investment decision-making process.Also,this study researches the expected investors' moral emotion and moral cognition(deontological evaluation and teleological evaluation)will indirectly affect the direct effect of CSR performance on individual investment intention,and with the help of related theories of psychology and behavior,this paper makes an in-depth discussion on the black box in the investment decisionmaking process.The experimental method was used to test the obtained data by the structural equation model to clarify the complex intermediary mechanism behind the relationship between CSR performance and individual investment intention from a more comprehensive perspective.Finally,Study III(situational experimental study)combines CSR performance with financial performance to explore the joint effect of the two on investment decisions.This study adopted the inter-group scenario experiment method of 2(CSR performance: high/low)×2(corporate financial performance: high/low),designed four scenarios with different levels of social responsibility performance and financial performance,and explored the influence of two factors on more complex and realistic investment decisions.Furthermore,a moderating mediating effect model is established,that is,the financial performance at different levels adjusts the relationship between the social responsibility performance and the mediating variables,and further adjusts the indirect influence of social responsibility performance on individual investment intention.Therefore,it is expected to explore how the main effect of CSR performance on individual investment intention and the intermediary effect of moral emotion and moral cognition(objective evaluation)change under the boundary conditions of different levels of financial performance.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:In the interview research section,(1)preliminarily determines the CSR performance affects the relationship of individual investors investment intention,grasps the individual investors in the securities market for CSR attitude and understanding,clarifies the existence of the impacts of CSR performance on personal investment intention in the real investment decision-making process,and positive/negative social responsibility performance will be investing in most investors tend to be a positive/negative impact.(2)The four individual investors are most concerned about CSR specific dimensions(consumers' rights and interests,environment protection,employees' rights,and interests and social public welfare).The conclusion not only theoretical structures the framework for the subsequent construction and puts forward the assumption of the model lays the foundation;it also provides research material and theoretical support for subsequent situational experiment design at the same time.(3)The investor information processing model plays an intermediary effect between CSR performance and individual investment intention.Therefore,in the subsequent theoretical framework and model hypothesis construction,the research takes the investor information processing mode(emotion processing and cognitive processing)as the main intermediary theoretical mechanism to be discussed.(4)Also,the interview found that the moral factor is an important content factor for investors when processing the social responsibility information,and the emotional processing and cognitive processing of the social responsibility information are the important internal driving factors for investors to form their investment intention.In the part of the situational experiment,the results show that,(1)CSR performance has a positive main effect on the investment intention of individual investors.(2)CSR performance can affect the investment intention of individual investors in two ways.The first is the independent intermediary function of investors' moral emotion;The second is the independent mediating function of investors' moral cognition(teleological evaluation).(3)CSR performance and financial performance have interactive effects on the investment intention of individual investors.CSR can effectively improve investors' investment intention,and when the level of corporate financial performance is high,social performance can promote investors' investment intention more obviously.(4)corporate financial performance strengthens the indirect positive impact of CSR performance on individual investment intention through investors' moral emotion and investors' moral cognition(teleological evaluation).(5)the study further found that whether the level of financial performance is high or low,enterprises' social responsibility will have a positive impact on individual investment decisions to a certain extent.Even for enterprises with poor financial status,their insistence on social responsibility can still improve investors' evaluation of the company.This study that individual investors have a positive attitude towards listed companies' social responsibility,and further studies the restrictive factors and mechanism from the perspectives of psychology and behavioral finance.The conclusion of this research has effectively made the guide of social responsibility strategy for those listed companies in China that are in their economic transformations,also,it enriches the theory of CSR system,at the same time,it confirms the validity of enterprises taking social responsibility in the capital market,that with positive social responsibility,it becomes an important source for listed companies to attract potential investors and create advantages in competitions,thus,it further provide strong supports for CSR in the securities market and listed companies to implement.