Investor Perception of ESG Performance: Examining Investment Intentions in the Chinese Stock Market with Social Self-Efficacy Moderation

Abstract

The increasing importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors has sparked scholarly interest in how company reputation influences stock market investment decisions. Most ESG research has focused on secondary data from public firms, ignoring the potential of surveys as a research tool. Addressing this gap, our study investigates the relationship between retail investors’ perceptions of corporate ESG performance and their investment attitude, as well as the impact on intention, with social self-efficacy serving as a moderator. The theoretical framework of this research was adopted from the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and previous studies that used TPB to measure intention reveal a range of explanations for the connection between the factors influencing intention through attitude. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis was used in this study, and the new findings show that Chinese investors’ perceptions of corporate ESG performance positively influence their investment attitudes and intentions. Furthermore, social self-efficacy moderates the relationship between the corporate environment and governance performance, attitudes, and intentions. Accordingly, this study identifies the contribution of explaining how investment intentions are related to corporate ESG performance, which has been based on past ESG studies, to lay a platform for sustainable corporate practices in the Chinese stock market.