Pathways to short-term and long-term financial performance improvements in the tourism industry: A configurational analysis of corporate social responsibility

Purpose – This study investigates how tourism firms enhance short- and long-term corporate financial performance (CFP) through corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, revealing the divergent impact pathways of CSR configurations. Methodology/Design/Approach – Based on stakeholder theory, three-year data of listed tourism companies in China were selected and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/ QCA) was used to identify the causal relationship between CSR portfolio and CFP. Findings – Our work shows that CSR practices do not automatically lead to improved CFP, but some combinations of CSR do contribute to high CFP. We further identified four pathways to short-term CFP improvements and five to the long term, and the results suggest that CFP improvements in the short run can occur in more accessible ways but recipes for the long term are more challenging. Originality of the research – As the first study to apply fs/QCA in the tourism context, we validate the configurational effects of CSR on CFP, revealing causal asymmetry and substitutability. These findings provide actionable insights for firms to strategically allocate CSR resources.