<p>Research suggests that firms participating in stock market liberalization programs are exposed to global investors who can exert cross-border influence on management decisions. Accordingly, as global investors increasingly adopt environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles, firms in these programs may enhance their corporate responsibility and their commitment to addressing grand challenges. We challenge this literature by explaining why this effect of stock market liberalization programs should not be taken for granted, especially in emerging markets and contribute to the field by showing that institutional factors moderate this relationship. Using China’s stock market liberalization programs as natural experiments that quasi-exogenously connect emerging-market firms to global investors, we find that emerging-market firms in stock liberalization programs reduce their disclosure of supplier identity information, an important step in tackling environmental grand challenges. However, when emerging-market firms have certain characteristics, such as a large proportion of committed foreign ownership, global environmental certifications, and top leadership with overseas experience, the negative effect is diminished and even reversed as the balance between the long-term upsides and short-term downsides of voluntary supplier disclosure shifts.</p>