Current status and future perspective of the link of corporate social responsibility–corporate financial performance in the tourism and hospitality industry

The CSR literature has paid close attention to the effect of CSR on corporate financial performance (CFP), well-known as the CSR–CFP link. Based on the instrumental perspective perceiving CSR as an instrument for enhancing a firm’s performance, people began to see CSR as not only a good deed that benefits society but also a strategy that can benefit the corporation. To empirically test this instrumental perspective, many researchers have investigated whether a firm’s engagement in CSR activities indeed leads to improving the firm’s performance. Through such investigations, the CSR literature has acknowledged that there are still many issues to explore in the CSR–CFP link. The current study, therefore, is to investigate what has been done in the TH literature regarding the CSR–CFP link in the 2000s and further to provide future directions for the CSR–CFP link.