Internationalization and Firm Performance of the Chinese Service Industry

The relationship between internationalization and performance has been an important research topic. The majority of the existing literature has focused on manufacturing firms, with limited attention given to service-oriented firms. The incorporation of the industrial environment in testing this relationship has been notably absent in these studies. This study addresses these gaps by examining the relationship between internationalization and performance, ㅈassessing the impact of the service industries' industrial environment on this relationship using industry competition intensity as a moderating variable. Utilizing a sample of 824 firms in China, this study employs panel data for both time and individual fixed effects analyses. The results demonstrates that the relationship between internationalization and firm performance followed an S-shaped curve pattern. We also find that industry competition intensity significantly moderated the relationship between internationalization and firm performance.