Influence of CSR Strategies on Stakeholder Value Creation in Emerging Markets: Evidence from 20 Asia-Pacific Economies

Abstract

In the world of emerging markets, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has emerged as a key strategic tool for sustainable development and building stakeholder relationships. But research on CSR strategies and their effects on the creation of stakeholder value in different institutional settings is still scarce. This study focuses on how CSR strategies affect the creation of stakeholder values in 20 emerging Asia-Pacific economies from 2012 to 2024 and explores the moderating effect of institutional quality. The study focuses on the short and long run relationships using a balanced panel data set of 260 country-years using the Cross-Sectionally Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) estimator and the Augmented Mean Group (AMG) and Common Correlated Effects Mean Group (CCEMG) estimators are employed to account for robustness checkings. Before estimation, second generation panel econometric tests such as Pesaran Cross sectional Dependence test, Pesaran–Yamagata Slope Heterogeneity test, CIPS and CADF panel unit root test and Westerlund cointegration test for panel are used to ensure the reliability of the empirical analysis. The results indicate that CSR strategies have a significant effect on the value creation of stakeholders in the short-term, as well as long-term. Institutions quality has also a positive direct effect which significantly enhances the positive relationship between CSR strategies and stakeholder value creation. Moreover, the results suggest that GDP per capita, financial development, foreign direct investment, trade openness and human capital have a positive impact on the creation of stakeholder value while inflation has a negative impact. Results from the robustness and panel Granger causality analyses indicate that the empirical results are stable and consistent. The study makes a contribution to the CSR and sustainability literature by combining Stakeholder Theory, Institutional Theory, within a cross-country panel framework and gives important policy implications for governments and corporate managers who are looking to maximize stakeholder value through strategic CSR initiatives, and better institutional governance in emerging economies.

Received: 2026-07-17 | Revised: 2026-09-28 | Accepted: 2026-09-29 | Published: 2026-09-30

Declarations

Consent to publish: The authors have provided consent to publish.

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Data availability statement: Data will be made available on reasonable request from the corresponding author.

Funding: This research received no external funding.

Clinical Trial Number: Not Applicable.

Declaration of using generative AI: During the preparation of this work the author(s) used ChatGPT in order to correct the grammatical errors. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take full responsibility for the content of the published article.

Author Contributions: S.K.S.: Conceptualization, methodology, writing—original draft preparation, writing—review and editing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.