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Given the emerging importance of the chief financial officer’s (CFO) role, this study aims to probe into the prevalence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) assurance practices in China and to examine whether or not CFO foreign, professional or academic experience affects the likelihood of CSR assurance decision.

All A-share listed Chinese companies during the year 2008–2017 with 5,144 firm-year observations have been investigated for this study.

This study finds a positive effect of CFO foreign and professional experience on CSR assurance. No significant association has been found between the CFO’s academic experience and CSR assurance. Additional analysis for Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sampled firms shows that the academic and professional experience of CFOs has a significant positive association with CSR assurance. However, the main findings are replicated in the case of firms under mandatory CSR reporting.

The limitations of this study are its generalizability, unidimensional measure of CSR assurance which is unable to capture its quality and explore the other traits of CFOs.

It provides assurance practitioners with valuable longitudinal data on China’s CSR reporting and assurance services. Also, firms should recognize the importance of having competent CFOs to improve the credibility of their CSR reporting. The cross-sectional variation analysis (GRI and mandatory CSR) will help firms to assess the value of each CFO attribute for their nonfinancial reporting and auditing choices while considering internal and external stakeholder demands.

This study not only updates the existing understanding of CSR assurance methods in China but also explains the significance of CFO-specific experience in enhancing the credibility of nonfinancial reporting.

Increased trapped heat in the atmosphere leads to global warming and economic activity is the primary culprit. This study proposes the nonlinear impact of economic activity on cooling degree days to develop a climate Kuznets curve (CKC). Further, this study explores the moderating role of higher education and renewable energy in diminishing the climate-altering effects of economic activity.

All the selected BRICS economies range from 1992 to 2020. The CKC analysis uses a distribution and outlier robust panel quantile autoregressive distributed lagged model.

Results confirmed a U-shaped CKC, controlling for population density, renewable energy, tertiary education enrollment and innovation. The moderating role of renewable energy and education can be exploited to tackle the progressively expanding climate challenges. Hence, education and renewable energy intervention can help in reducing CKC-based global warming.

This study highlighted the incorporation of climate change mitigating curriculum in education, so that the upcoming economic agents are well equipped to reduce global warming which must be addressed globally.

This study is instrumental in developing the climate change-based economic activity Kuznets curve and assessing the potential of higher education and renewable energy policy intervention.