Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.20867/thm.32.3.12Shan Gao
Pathways to short-term and long-term financial performance improvements in the tourism industry: A configurational analysis of corporate social responsibility
Shan Gao
orcid.org/0009-0007-1413-8229
; Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying, Malaysia
Hairul Nizam Ismail
; Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Centre for Innovative Planning and Development (CiPD), Malaysia
Pei Yee Tan
; Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Centre for Innovative Planning and Development (CiPD), Malaysia
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
346474
URI
Publication date:
22.4.2026.
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