Consumer reactions to corporate social responsibility: The role of CSR domains

Abstract Based on the central premise that corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions are inherently moral acts, we draw upon moral foundations theory to investigate the extent to which consumers' moral foundations affect their pro-company behaviors based on CSR domains. In two studies, our results reveal that when consumers' moral foundations are congruent with CSR domains, positive pro-company behaviors increase. Moreover, this congruency effect is observed only in positive CSR actions but not in CSR lapses. Lastly, we introduce consumer-company identification as the underlying process driving the consumer-domain congruence effect on pro-company reactions. Theoretical contributions and practical implications for marketers are discussed.

[1]  V. Swaminathan,et al.  'My' Brand or 'Our' Brand: The Effects of Brand Relationship Dimensions and Self-Construal on Brand Evaluations , 2007 .

[2]  Richard A. Johnson,et al.  The Effects of Corporate Governance and Institutional Ownership Types on Corporate Social Performance , 1999 .

[3]  Peter A. Dacin,et al.  The Company and the Product: Corporate Associations and Consumer Product Responses , 1997 .

[4]  C. Bhattacharya,et al.  Corporate social responsibility: a consumer psychology perspective , 2016 .

[5]  Brian A. Nosek,et al.  Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. , 2009, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[6]  Brian A. Nosek,et al.  Mapping the moral domain. , 2011, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[7]  Henri Servaes,et al.  The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Firm Value: The Role of Customer Awareness , 2012, Manag. Sci..

[8]  P. Antonetti,et al.  Consumer reactions to corporate tax strategies: the role of political ideology , 2017 .

[9]  D. Wood.  Corporate Social Performance Revisited , 1991 .

[10]  June Cotte,et al.  Does it pay to be good , 2009 .

[11]  H. Triandis.  The Self and Social Behavior in Differing Cultural Contexts , 1989 .

[12]  N. Schwarz,et al.  The Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Activities on Companies With Bad Reputations , 2006 .

[13]  Samuel B. Graves,et al.  The corporate social performance-financial performance link , 1997 .

[14]  Michael D. Buhrmester,et al.  Amazon's Mechanical Turk , 2011, Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

[15]  David Dunning,et al.  Self-Image Motives and Consumer Behavior: How Sacrosanct Self-Beliefs Sway Preferences in the Marketplace , 2007 .

[16]  C. B. Bhattacharya,et al.  Leveraging Corporate Responsibility: The Stakeholder Route to Maximizing Business and Social Value , 2011 .

[17]  S. West,et al.  Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions. , 1994 .

[18]  E. Higgins.  Making a good decision: value from fit. , 2000, The American psychologist.

[19]  L. Ross,et al.  The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings: Distortions in the attribution process”, in Ed), Advances in Experimental Social New York, pp. . , 1977 .

[20]  K. Aquino,et al.  The self-importance of moral identity. , 2002, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[21]  K. Vohs,et al.  Case Western Reserve University , 1990 .

[22]  Kristopher J Preacher,et al.  Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models , 2008, Behavior research methods.

[23]  Shelley L. Brickson.  Organizational Identity Orientation: Forging a Link between Organizational Identity and Organizations' Relations with Stakeholders , 2005 .

[24]  Bodo B. Schlegelmilch,et al.  CSR practices and consumer perceptions , 2013 .

[25]  Punam Anand Keller,et al.  Regulatory Focus and Efficacy of Health Messages , 2006 .

[26]  Vikas Mittal,et al.  How Political Identity and Charity Positioning Increase Donations: Insights from Moral Foundations Theory , 2012 .

[27]  Cristel Antonia Russell,et al.  Here or there? Consumer reactions to corporate social responsibility initiatives: Egocentric tendencies and their moderators , 2010 .

[28]  J. Graham,et al.  When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that Liberals may not Recognize , 2007 .

[29]  Edward B. Royzman,et al.  Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion , 2001 .

[30]  Jennifer Edson Escalas,et al.  Self‐Construal, Reference Groups, and Brand Meaning , 2005 .

[31]  J. Haidt,et al.  Intuitive ethics: how innately prepared intuitions generate culturally variable virtues , 2004, Daedalus.

[32]  Morteza Dehghani,et al.  Resisting Temptation for the Good of the Group: Binding Moral Values and the Moralization of Self-Control , 2018, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[33]  C. Bhattacharya,et al.  The Business Case for Sustainability Reporting: Evidence from Stock Market Reactions , 2017 .

[34]  Kartik Kalaignanam,et al.  Product and environmental social performance: Varying effect on firm performance , 2013 .

[35]  J. Peloza,et al.  How can corporate social responsibility activities create value for stakeholders? A systematic review , 2011 .

[36]  R. Janoff-Bulman,et al.  Proscriptive versus prescriptive morality: two faces of moral regulation. , 2009, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[37]  Jesse Graham,et al.  Planet of the Durkheimians : Where Community , Authority , and Sacredness Are Foundations of Morality , 2008 .

[38]  Paul C. Godfrey,et al.  The relationship between corporate social responsibility and shareholder value: an empirical test of the risk management hypothesis , 2009 .

[39]  Shawn L. Berman,et al.  Measurement of Corporate Social Action , 2006 .

[40]  S. Ratneshwar,et al.  Drivers of consumer–brand identification , 2012 .

[41]  Xueming Luo,et al.  Corporate Social Responsibility, Customer Satisfaction, and Market Value , 2006 .

[42]  R. Krishnan,et al.  An analysis of consumer reactions to green strategies , 2013 .

[43]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events: the mobilization-minimization hypothesis. , 1991, Psychological bulletin.

[44]  Celia V. Harquail,et al.  Organizational images and member identification. , 1994 .

[45]  R. Deshpandé,et al.  Identity salience and the influence of differential activation of the social self-schema on advertising response. , 2002, The Journal of applied psychology.

[46]  Shelley L. Brickson.  Organizational identity orientation: The genesis of the role of the firm and distinct forms of social value , 2007 .

[47]  C. Bhattacharya,et al.  Does Doing Good Always Lead to Doing Better? Consumer Reactions to Corporate Social Responsibility , 2001 .

[48]  H. Tajfel,et al.  The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior. , 2004 .

[49]  L. Ross.  The Intuitive Psychologist And His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process1 , 1977 .

[50]  C. Bhattacharya,et al.  Reaping Relational Rewards from Corporate Social Responsibility: The Role of Competitive Positioning , 2007 .

[51]  C. Bhattacharya,et al.  Consumer–Company Identification: A Framework for Understanding Consumers’ Relationships with Companies , 2003 .

[52]  H. Markus,et al.  Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. , 1991 .

[53]  Donald R. Lichtenstein,et al.  The Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility on Customer Donations to Corporate-Supported Nonprofits , 2004 .

[54]  K. Aquino,et al.  Moral Identity and Judgments of Charitable Behaviors , 2007 .

[55]  H. Triandis.  The Psychological Measurement of Cultural Syndromes. , 1996 .

[56]  Angela Y. Lee,et al.  Bringing the frame into focus: the influence of regulatory fit on processing fluency and persuasion. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[57]  Donal E. Carlston,et al.  Negativity and extremity biases in impression formation: A review of explanations. , 1989 .

[58]  D. Maheswaran,et al.  The Effects of Self-Construal and Commitment on Persuasion , 2005 .

[59]  Jennifer Aaker,et al.  “I” Seek Pleasures and “We” Avoid Pains: The Role of Self-Regulatory Goals in Information Processing and Persuasion , 2001 .

[60]  Blair Kidwell,et al.  Getting Liberals and Conservatives to Go Green: Political Ideology and Congruent Appeals , 2013 .

[61]  Joseph Goodman,et al.  Crowdsourcing Consumer Research , 2017 .