Big Data and ESG Performance: The Moderating Role of Corporate Social Responsibility in Chinese Listed Firms

Big data is promoted as a route to better environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, yet evidence on its benefits is mixed, suggesting its value depends on firm‐level conditions that remain unclear. Drawing on resource‐based, absorptive‐capacity and stakeholder theories, this study proposes corporate social responsibility (CSR) as one such condition and tests it using fixed‐effects models on 1529 firm‐year observations of Chinese A‐share listed firms over 2009–2023. We find that big data is positively associated with ESG performance and that this association strengthens as CSR increases ( β = 0.004, p < 0.05). This complementarity, however, is confined to private firms; in state‐owned enterprises, CSR and big data act as substitutes. These findings imply that private firms should pair data investment with stakeholder engagement, whereas policymakers should tailor digital‐sustainability programmes to firms' ownership. By reframing CSR as a condition that makes data capabilities productive, the study advances digital sustainability research.