PurposeThe purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of environmental uncertainty on corporate social responsibility (CSR), and involves corporate financial investment as mediating factor into this relationship to identify whether Chinese enterprises pursue fame or profit under rising environmental uncertainty.Design/methodology/approachData of listed companies in China from 2010 to 2019 are employed. Fixed effect and mediating effect models were used to explore the relationship between environmental uncertainty, corporate financial investment, and CSR. The heterogeneity influence and moderating effect are discussed by using the method of grouping test and adding interactive items.FindingsThe study finds that rising environmental uncertainty has a negative impact on CSR. It stimulates managements' short-sighted motivation, so that enterprises prioritize financial investment that can solve short-term goals, rather than CSR performance. This inhibitory effect is caused by holding illiquid financial assets with the motivation of “speculative profit seeking.” The negative effect is greater in the samples of state-owned enterprises, nonfamily enterprises and enterprises with low risk-taking.Practical implicationsIt provides a decision-making direction for implementation of CSR governance and the construction of CSR system, particularly in emerging market economies.Social implicationsCSR is widely known in developed countries for its formation, development and role, but its effectiveness and behavioral motivation are less mentioned in emerging markets. In the future, the research in this area needs to be further advanced.Originality/valueThe study makes significant contributions to the mechanisms behind the link between environmental uncertainty and CSR by taking corporate financial investment as an intermediary factor into the analysis, especially in the unique market context of China.

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The hometown connection is one of the crucial relationships in China's relational society. Using the data of A-share listed companies, we examine how hometown connections between corporate executives and local government officials affect corporate cash holdings from the perspective of financial engineering. We find that hometown connections significantly decrease corporate cash holdings. After a variety of robustness tests, this result is still significant. We also find that hometown connections do have a significant impact on corporate cash holdings in provinces with a lower marketization index. One plausible channel for the hometown connections effect is reducing preventive motivation of corporate cash holdings.