The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility（CSR）has been long considered a significant factor for the firms as it presented various challenges and opportunities at the same time.Mainly post the 2007-2008 financial crisis,the objectives of organizations have shifted away from pursuing profit maximization only to pursuing objectives that would add value to other environmental and social factors.Therefore,firms would need to adapt in different ways to meet such trend and engage in activities that incorporate factors outside the core business economic activities.Especially in China,the government has been stepping up in order to promote sustainable future and implemented various measures to engage firms in social and environmental initiatives.As such,academic scholars have examined various factors that would influence the corporate’s CSR behavior and strategy.Most of those literatures have examined the statement that firms engage in CSR because there are direct economic benefits realized.These may include enhancing brand recognition and customer loyalty,building reputational capital or fostering an environment that would favor a firm’s strategic position in the market.Ultimately,those will lead to improved financial performance and other economic benefits for the organizations alike.At the same time,numerous literature in China have also examined how external factors such as government pressure would influence firm’s CSR engagement.Nevertheless,most of these studies have neglected some of the important factors that may significantly influence CSR engagement of a firm.One such factor is peer groups.Ironically,there are numerous studies examining the effect of peers on a firm’s financial performance or corporate governance.However,little is explored on how it can influence CSR engagement or performance of a firm.This paper fulfills this research gap and examines whether peer effects indeed influence the CSR performance of listed firms in China.Therefore,the objective of this study is to explore the overlapping area of these two concepts: CSR and peer effects by investigating the Chinese listed firm’s CSR performance level and its specific peer group’s CSR performance level.The first part of the paper analyses the previous literature about CSR,institutional theory,social comparison and peer effects.In terms of CSR,numerous literature have focused primarily on its definitions and scope of responsibilities.That is because CSR encapsulates a wide array of a social,environmental,political,economic and legal framework which could be difficult to have a common consensus among different beliefs and interpretations and thus an ongoing debate has provoked many scholarly articles surrounding the definition of CSR.However,such debate over time has developed the concept of CSR into a more sophisticated and interesting one to explore.The contemporary definition of CSR emphasizes that CSR is an obligatory response to an external pressure rather than a voluntary measure of a firm.This is supported by a number of empirical researches showing that failure to engage in CSR can bring both direct and indirect disadvantage to a firm in various aspects.In the review of CSR literature in China,the studies have predominantly focused on government pressure as external factor that affects firm’s CSR strategy and performance.This is due to a unique institutional setting of China where government holds significant authority and power to influence firms.However given the significant number of evidences from the West,there are still outstanding factors that are yet to be examined in influencing firm’s CSR performance.Such factors can be derived from two theories: institutional theory and social comparison.Based on institutional theory,organizations are a herd of followers and they tend to conform to each other in order to meet social standards and norms.Such activities would collectively form an environment where institutional isomorphism is prevalent.That is,firms will have a similar corporate structure and forms as they behave like one another.Furthermore,social comparison theory proposes that individuals tend to evaluate their performance against others who are subject to comparison and also shares similar characteristics.Initially,these arguments of social comparison theory were only applied to social sciences and education.Later on,a significant number of empirical researches have shown that such social phenomena is also existent in a corporate environment.Such findings have enriched the argument of ‘peer effects’ where the effect of a peer can be seen as important factors influencing particular organizational behavior of a firm.In other words,a peer’s characteristics could influence a firm’s characteristics.As a result,an increasing number of scholars have looked at how peers can affect firm’s financial and structural forms as well as CSR engagement.Some of the findings on the impact of peers were on a firm’s cash holdings,capital structure,investment decisions,corporate philanthropic activities and CSR reporting quality.Furthermore,some of the previous literature suggested that there are different types of peer groups,specifically industry peers,community peers and institutional equivalents peer groups.Based on these analyses,the study proposes following theoretical framework.Given the rising interest of CSR,firms are seeking certain types of guidance in order to cope with the trend.Based on the literature review,it is safe to assume that firms take peers as a significant reference providing such guidance.Whether these peers belong within the same industry or community,the wide scope various definition of CSR make it challenging to derive a simple strategic initiative that can be applied universally.Therefore,such view leads to a simple statement that under the uncertainty of guidance,firms would compare their CSR performance against their various peers and gain legitimacy to an extent where they imitate their peers in order to meet social expectation.Especially in China,considering that CSR is a relatively less known concept,peers might act as important cues for firms to establish a framework of reference.Thus,the first hypothesis is that the focal firm’s CSR performance is positively associated with CSR performance of both its industry and community peers（H1a and H1b）.Furthermore,based on previous literature,a two wellknown framework of peer groups are community and industry.However,analyzing the effect of these two peer groups separately can be misleading because focal firm may share multiple similarities with their peers.Therefore,further analysis is conducted in order to take into account such factor.In specific,institutional equivalents,which is the peers with multiple institutional cues was introduced in the study.Therefore,the second hypothesis analysis the effect of institutional equivalents on a firm’s CSR performance level（H2a）.Lastly,as suggested in previous literature,peers with multiple similar characteristics would provide a further level of confidence for firms when choosing their reference or benchmark.Therefore,hypothesis H2 b examines whether the effect of institutional equivalents is stronger than the effect of community and industry peers.In order to test these hypotheses,the study uses the following methodology and statistical approach.In testing the hypotheses,the sample of all Chinese listed companies with its respective CSR Scores were extracted from Hexun Database.The data for independent variables and other control variables data were all taken from CSMAR database.Furthermore,due to the wide scope of CSR,the analysis of this study was based on three dimensions of CSR which are Overall CSR,Institutional CSR and technical CSR.The institutional CSR represents an indirect dimension such as environmental and social aspect and technical CSR considers direct stakeholders such as customer and suppliers.From sum of all three CSR dimensions,an arithmetic mean was derived by using the method proposed by Leary and Roberts（2014）.Furthermore,in order to account repeated firm-year data,an unbalanced panel data was organized using STATA.In terms of regression analysis,Hausman（1978）test was employed validating that fixed effects model should be used instead of random effects model.The results of the fixed effects model showed that all independent variables which are community peers,industry peers and institutional equivalents’ CSR performance had a significant correlation with the focal firm’s CSR performance.Such trends are consistent across Overall CSR,Technical CSR and Institutional CSR.However,the significance and magnitude level for the institutional equivalents was lower compared to community and industry peers.Thus,Hypothesis H1 a,H1b and H2 a can be accepted but H2 b can be rejected.The empirical evidence from this study illustrates how peer effects can also play a significant role in CSR performance level under the Chinese context.This has shed a light in a relatively unexplored area of literature and provided further understanding of how a firm’s CSR engagement can be shaped in different ways.Furthermore,the argument from Marquis and Tilcsik（2016）that multiple institutional cues would justify a stronger influence of a firm’s imitating behavior can be rejected under the context of China.Rather,such multiple similarities of institutional equivalents and various reference groups would cause further confusion or even distortion for firms to justify their CSR engagement.This is because different firms may have different interpretations of a peer’s behavior and also there are many endogenous complexities that is hard to measure and quantify in the study.This provokes further studies on investigating similar issues from different statistical approach or identifying more comprehensive variables that may take into account the other significant measures that may have been neglected in literatures.Furthermore,organizational behavior and management can vary depending on specific countries and therefore further study can look at specific countries.Despite such potential improvements,this study has provided a deeper insight into CSR and peer effects for both scholars and business managers in China and beyond.