مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد واکنش مصرف کنندگان به مسئولیت اجتماعی شرکتی – الزویر 2018

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 consumercompany identification as the underlying process driving the consumer-domain congruence effect on procompany reactions. Theoretical contributions and practical implications for marketers are discussed.

Introduction

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) today is a pervasive preoccupation of businesses worldwide. The prominence of CSR on the global business landscape is fueled in no small measure by consumer demand: the sense provided by companies of the pivotal role of consumers in driving their CSR strategies (McKinsey & Company, 2014) is matched by marketplace surveys attesting to unprecedented consumer interest in consuming from companies that are socially responsible/ sustainable (Cone, 2017). In that, CSR is not only a moral imperative for businesses today but, increasingly, a business imperative as well, with consumers rewarding socially responsible companies by engaging in a host of pro-company behaviors (e.g., purchase, loyalty, advocacy). Not surprisingly, the socially responsible activities of companies span a great variety of CSR domains, which refers to the substantive areas of a firm’s CSR policies, programs, and actions as they relate to the firm’s stakeholder relationships (Öberseder, Schlegelmilch, & Murphy, 2013; Peloza & Shang, 2011; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001; Wood, 1991). Among various classifications of CSR actions (e.g., Peloza & Shang, 2011), this paper chooses the taxonomy of CSR domains provided by MSCIKLD (formerly KLD Research & Analytics Inc.) because it is the most the mostly widely used taxonomy of CSR domains, both in practice (Du, Yu, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2017) and, importantly, in academic research (e.g., Servaes & Tamayo, 2013). Specifically, MSCIKLD reports on firm performance in seven CSR domains: employee relations; human rights; diversity; community issues; corporate governance; the environment; product issues. Naturally, while the CSR actions of many companies encompass all seven domains, others choose to focus, for a variety of identity and strategic reasons, on a subset. This raises a basic question of considerable conceptual and practical import: are consumer responses to CSR sensitive to the domain of CSR action? Interestingly, while the substantial body of extant work on consumer reactions to CSR points to a variety of consumer- and CSR-specific sources of variation in such reactions (see Sen, Du, & Bhattacharya, 2016 for a recent review), it is virtually silent on the role of the CSR domain per se. In this paper, we build on the basic premise that consumers view CSR actions as, fundamentally moral acts to argue that they will evince significant CSR domain-based variation in their pro-company responses.