Beyond Reputation: Corporate Reputation and Employee-Perceived Customer Trust as Parallel Pathways to Employee-Perceived Firm Performance in China’s Tea Industry

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) can create value through stakeholder responses, but credence-goods settings make it important to distinguish broad reputational evaluations from trust-based reliance on the producer. Integrating signaling and stakeholder theories, this study examines corporate reputation and employee-perceived customer trust as parallel mechanisms linking CSR to employee-perceived firm performance in Yunnan’s tea industry. The study builds on prior CSR mediation research by using a signal–response conversion perspective to clarify how signaling and stakeholder theories differentiate two established stakeholder responses: accumulated evaluative standing (corporate reputation) and perceived relational reliance (employee-perceived customer trust). Survey data from 489 employees were analyzed using a covariance-based seven-factor CFA under explicit maximum-likelihood estimation, observed-composite path regressions, one 5000-resample percentile-bootstrap mediation analysis, and hierarchical moderation tests. Both indirect effects were significant, while the post-mediation direct effect was not (B = 0.083, SE = 0.086, t = 0.967, p = 0.334, 95% CI [−0.086, 0.252]). The customer-trust pathway had the larger point estimate, but the bootstrap contrast was not significant (difference = 0.081, 95% CI [−0.011, 0.177]). Firm size did not moderate the CSR–performance relationship. The findings support two distinct stakeholder-response pathways without establishing that one is statistically stronger; because credence intensity was not itself measured, the industry setting is treated as the theoretical context rather than as an empirically tested moderator.