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.

Our research examines the effect of cognitive ability on corporate social responsibility (CSR) based on the data of listed companies in China's A‐share market. As an informal system, cognitive ability plays an important governance role in CSR performance. The channel analysis shows that cognitive ability stimulates CSR through three mechanisms: improving external supervision, strengthening internal control, and promoting external supervision to boost internal control. In addition, the effect of cognitive ability on CSR performance is heterogeneous according to the different ownership of enterprises. Furthermore, we find that cognitive ability has an important supervisory effect on the CSR of state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) with greater financing constraints. Mitigating the financing constraints and the operating risks of non‐SOEs can better improve governance effect of cognitive ability on them, reducing their practices of CSR motivated by rent‐seeking.

We find that there is a same tendency between credit ratings and bond defaults by analyzing the status quo of defaults in Chinese market and credit ratings from 2015 to 2020. Caused by the interest conflicts of business models, ancillary business, public information ratings and horizontal competition, the quality of credit rating is badly impacted, thus resulting in the defaults. Therefore, we explain the reasons for such a tendency from interest conflict perspectives. We also offer some proposals to avoid default problems and improve the ratings provided by credit rating agencies, so as to promote the healthy development of bond market and preventing the systemic risks that bond market brings. Consequently, our study systematically concludes the interest conflict problems that lead to rating inflation and enriches related literature.