In this study, we leverage a comprehensive dataset of over 3.8 million bid entries from institutional investors participating in China’s capital market to investigate the determinants of heterogeneous bidding behavior among these investors and the subsequent economic outcomes. We evaluate the sustainability of initial public offering (IPO) performance through three interrelated metrics: post-IPO stock price performance, financial accounting performance, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Our analysis reveals a pronounced positive association between the quality of firms’ pre-IPO and the recent reforms to the bookbuilding mechanism in China’s capital market, as well as the level of diversity in institutional investors’ bidding opinions. After accounting for these factors, we focus on the nexus between the diversity of bidding opinions and the sustainability of IPO performance. The empirical evidence indicates that a higher degree of diversity in bidding opinions is inversely related to firms’ post-IPO stock price performance, financial accounting performance, and ESG performance. Further mechanism tests suggest that this diversity leads to a depletion of medium- to long-term share price performance by intensifying market sentiment; impedes the enhancement of financial accounting performance by reducing the capital raised during the IPO; and negatively impacts ESG performance by constraining the firm’s ability to fulfill its corporate social responsibilities. These findings challenge the assumption that diversity of opinion is always beneficial. The insights gained from this research have significant implications for the sustainable growth strategies of listed companies in emerging markets.

The paper explores life value assessment methods in China from both the historical and modern perspectives. The historical perspective includes the death penalty ransom approach and government pricing approach, while the modern perspective contains the human capital method and willingness-to-pay method. The human capital method measures the economic value created by people and uses it as their life assessment value, and the willingness-to-pay method evaluates peoples’ life value indirectly through the trade-off between the death risk and benefit. The paper then puts forward improvement ideas for the two modern life value assessment models and proposes possible future research directions, meanwhile providing a reference for such practical issues as compensation policymaking for industrial injuries or deaths for the sustainable development of emerging countries.