Organizational Resilience in China’s Real Estate Industry: The Roles of ESG, Innovation Performance, and Policy Support

This study examines how ESG performance, innovation performance, and policy support relate to organizational resilience in China’s real estate industry. Drawing on the Resource-Based View, Institutional Theory, and Configurational Theory, organizational resilience is conceptualized through recovery and resistance capacities. Fixed-effects regression, robustness tests, and heterogeneity analyses are applied using panel data from 80 Chinese A-share-listed real estate firms from 2015–2024 (800 firm-year observations). The findings show that ESG performance is positively associated with accounting-based recovery, particularly Return on Equity, but negatively affects market-based recovery in the baseline models, reflected in Tobin’s Q. Additional analysis reveals a U-shaped relationship between ESG performance and Tobin’s Q, suggesting that initial market valuation penalties may decline as ESG engagement deepens. Innovation performance shows limited baseline effects but becomes more relevant in alternative specifications related to recovery and leverage. Policy support, measured through tax rebates (TAX), did not show significant direct effects on organizational resilience in the baseline models. However, robustness analyses using green expenditure intensity (GEx) suggest possible indirect and conditional policy-related mechanisms associated with sustainability-oriented investment behavior. Overall, organizational resilience is shaped by heterogeneous interactions among ESG, innovation, and policy-related factors.