IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/hascer/2017-046.html

How Beliefs Influence Behavior: Confucianism and Innovation in China

Author

Listed:
  • Feng, Xunan

    (Southwestern University of Finance and Economics)

  • Jin, Zhi

    (Southwestern University of Finance and Economics)

  • Johansson, Anders C.

    (Stockholm China Economic Research Institute)

Abstract

Previous studies have studied how religious beliefs may affect economic activity. We extend this literature by examining how Confucianism is linked to innovative activities at the firm level in China. We analyze the relationship between Confucianism and several proxies for inputs and outputs of innovative activities. Our results show that Confucianism is significantly related to lower levels of innovative activities regardless of which measure for firm-level innovation we use. We also find that type of ultimate ownership influences this relationship, with innovation among state-controlled firms being significantly more affected by Confucianism. This study thus adds to the understanding of how traditional belief systems influence behavior at the firm level.

Suggested Citation

  • Feng, Xunan & Jin, Zhi & Johansson, Anders C., 2017. "How Beliefs Influence Behavior: Confucianism and Innovation in China," Stockholm School of Economics Asia Working Paper Series 2017-46, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm China Economic Research Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:hascer:2017-046
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://swopec.hhs.se/hascer/papers/hascer2017-046.pdf
    File Function: Complete Rendering
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fang, Guanfu & Gao, Tiantian & He, Huanlang & Sun, Qian, 2023. "Public credit information arrangements and entrepreneurship: Evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    2. Zhang, Ning & Bo, Lan & Wang, Xuanqiao, 2024. "Confucian culture and corporate default risk: Assessing the governance influence of traditional culture," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    3. Yu Zhang & Wenqi Zhang & Bowen Cheng, 2024. "The curse of spanning over millennium: Confucian culture and corruption in China," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(2), pages 473-500, April.
    4. Qianghua Guo & Yidan Wei, 2025. "Confucianism and corporate environmental protection investment: Evidence from heavily polluting listed companies in China," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 46(4), pages 1973-1992, June.
    5. Jiang, Weijie & Yu, Hui, 2025. "Confucian culture and corporate innovation," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    6. Ning Zhang & Lan Bo & Shulin Wang & Xuanqiao Wang, 2025. "Exploring Confucian Culture’s Impact on Corporate Debt Default Risk: An Ethical Decision-Making Approach," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 198(2), pages 467-484, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O30 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - General
    • Z10 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:hascer:2017-046. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: NanHee Lee (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cehhsse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.