The paper investigates adjustment mechanism of corporate social responsibility from trade-off perspectives. The results shows that Chinese listed firms are rational in corporate social responsibility investment,and determine the optimal corporate social responsibility investment based on external pressure,corporate characteristics and costs, with the average adjustment half-life time being 1.4608 years, which is consistent with static trade-off theory; due to the difference of risk attitude, adjustment process owns asymmetric characteristics. It means those above the target are significantly faster than those below, with corresponding difference of adjustment half-life time being 0.4320, which is consistent with dynamic trade-off theory. Therefore, a direct policy implication of this study is that, we not only need policy pressure to force enterprises to fulfill social responsibility, but also need to guide the stakeholders to respond corporate social responsibility better, thus making the enterprise take more proactive steps.