<p>With the changing priorities of institutional and retail investors, companies have also begun to respond positively to them; Whether it is out of “egoism” or “altruism”, poverty alleviation work in enterprises will definitely receive attention from all sectors of society. Whether it will be favored by institutional investors still needs further research. This paper uses Chinese A-share Listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2016 to 2023 as samples to test the impact of targeted poverty alleviation on institutional investors’ shareholding preferences. Research has found that institutional investors prefer enterprises with high levels of targeted poverty alleviation, and this conclusion still holds after robustness testing; Further research has verified the mediating effect of analyst attention, and the low marketization environment has a stronger promoting effect on the relationship between the two; Finally, after distinguishing poverty alleviation models, it was found that compared to blood transfusion poverty alleviation, hematopoietic poverty alleviation enterprises can better win the favor of institutional investors. This article enriches the relevant research on corporate targeted poverty alleviation and institutional investor shareholding preferences, and enhances the understanding of the impact of corporate social responsibility on investor behavior; It is of great practical significance to actively respond to government policies for enterprises, optimize corporate social responsibility performance, improve the effectiveness of internal and external governance, and promote the development of global poverty reduction.</p>