<p>Firms are ethically responsible for proactively supporting the community in which they operate. These ethical commitments go beyond regulatory or legal obligations (i.e. formal institutions). Accordingly, we provide novel evidence on how executives’ hometown identity inspires firms to ethically engage in poverty alleviation efforts. Using a unique sample of Chinese listed firms from 2016 to 2020, our key findings are threefold. First, we find that firms headquartered in executives’ hometown are more likely to engage in poverty alleviation initiatives. This finding indicates that poverty alleviation can be viewed as an ethical responsibility rooted in community connections rather than being viewed solely as a reaction to external institutional requirements. Second, the results of the mediation analyses suggest that agency costs, political capital and corporate reputation mediate the relationship between executives’ hometown identity and corporate poverty alleviation. Third, our moderating results suggest that state ownership negatively moderates the main relationship, while Confucian culture and media pressure positively moderate it. Our results are robust across different sensitivity and endogeneity tests and matching and sample selection techniques. This study extends the literature on firms’ pro-ethical and humanitarian engagement in emerging markets and offers policy implications for both government authorities and corporations.</p>