The “Cost Paradox” and “Capital Attribute” of Health Investment: A Study on the Dual Impact of Employee Health Human Capital on Corporate Short-Term Financial Performance and Long-Term Innovation Growth

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-604-3_42How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Health Investment; Cost Paradox; Employee Health Human Capital; Corporate Innovation; Human Capital Structure

Abstract

The Relationship Between Employee Health, Human Capital Investment, and Corporate Performance: Tensions Arising from the “Cost Paradox” in the Context of the “Healthy China” Strategy. This study, grounded in human capital theory and a strategic management perspective, uses data from Chinese A-share-listed companies from 2013 to 2023. It constructs a corporate health investment index through text analysis. It employs a panel fixed-effects model to empirically examine the dual impact of these investments on short-term financial performance and long-term innovation growth. The findings reveal that health investments exhibit an explicit dual nature of “cost attribute” and “capital attribute”: they exert a significant inhibitory effect on current-period return on total assets, yet significantly promote future patent output and R&D investment. Mediation mechanism tests indicate that these effects are primarily realized through two pathways: optimizing the human capital structure (i.e., reducing turnover rates) and alleviating corporate financing constraints. Further robustness checks—including alternative variable measurements, consideration of lagged effects, and heterogeneity analysis—all support the reliability of the above conclusions. Theoretically, this study enriches human capital theory and resolves cognitive dilemmas surrounding the cost paradox. Practically, it provides critical empirical evidence and decision-making references for corporate managers in making strategic health investments and for governments in formulating incentive policies.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Liying Zhu
AU  - Ze Wang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/02/26
TI  - The “Cost Paradox” and “Capital Attribute” of Health Investment: A Study on the Dual Impact of Employee Health Human Capital on Corporate Short-Term Financial Performance and Long-Term Innovation Growth
BT  - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Economic Development and Business Culture (ICEDBC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 403
EP  - 412
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-604-3_42
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-604-3_42
ID  - Zhu2026
ER  -