Robot Penetration and the Executive–Employee Pay Gap: Unveiling a U-Shaped Relationship in Chinese A-Share Listed Companies

The current thriving robot industry is greatly transforming the way humans produce and live. This paper employs A-share listed corporations as a sample and finds that there is a U-shaped correlation between robot penetration (RP) and the executive-employee pay gap (EEPG). This nonlinear relationship mainly exists in state-owned, large-scale, and highly labor-intensive enterprises. Further analysis finds that the U-shaped relationships may stem from the dynamic impact of RP on the internal labor structure and production scale. That is, RP will have an inverted U-shaped influence on the proportion of highly skilled employees, and will generally expand the production scale of enterprises. The findings provide actionable guidance for corporate compensation design and human-capital planning.