The Relationship between Corporate Sustainable Development Performance, Investor Sentiment, and Managerial Overconfidence

In the post-pandemic era, companies are facing challenges in their business development and may pay fewer attention to their sustainable development performance, whereas the investors are looking for better corporate sustainable development. Using a sample of Chinese listed companies during 2010–2018, this paper empirically examines the relation between corporate sustainable development performance, investor sentiment, and managerial overconfidence with econometric tools such as panel data regression and S-GMM estimation. Three kinds of corporate sustainable development activities as measured by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) indexes, including consumer rights, employee benefits, and environmental protection, are proved to have a positive impact on investor sentiment. Compared to the SME and GEM Board, investor sentiment in the Main Board is less affected by corporate sustainable development. Furthermore, investor’s high sentiment leads to high managerial confidence in the SME and GEM Board, and managerial overconfidence is self-correcting over time. This paper illustrates why maintaining good corporate sustainable development performance is beneficial for listed companies from a new perspective.