Using the necessary condition analysis approach, this paper identifies key sub-dimensions within corporate social performance and evaluates the extent to which they serve as indispensable conditions for operational efficiency of tourism firms. A multi-criteria decision-making method and stochastic frontier analysis are adopted to measure corporate social performance and operational efficiency, respectively. Empirical results show that among the six specific sub-dimensions, only social responsibility is identified as a necessary condition for operational efficiency. The bottleneck analysis shows that social responsibility sub-dimension is not a binding constraint at low levels of operational efficiency but becomes indispensable and must be fully realized when striving for the highest levels of performance. This paper advances tourism scholarship by introducing asymmetric analysis techniques and necessary causal logic to examine the relationship between corporate social performance and operational efficiency.
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