Corporate social responsibility and corporate innovation–The moderating role of CEO social capital

•We show the relationship between CSR and innovation capability is inverted U-shaped.•We measure CEO social capital along multiple demographic dimensions.•CEO social capital moderates CSR's effect on innovation capability.•Our findings hold after accounting for firm ownership and life cycle. Whether and how CSR can influence corporate innovation is a question that has been stacked up recently. Based on panel data for Chinese listed companies from 2011 to 2020, we revisit the relationship between CSR and CI and further examine whether CEO social capital plays a role. The results show that the relationship between CSR and CI is non-linear, which still holds controlling for endogeneity and robustness tests, and that CEO social capital exerts a positive moderating effect on the impact of CSR on CI, but only at high levels of CEO social capital.