Understanding worldview beliefs to allay skepticism toward CSR advertising

Robert G. Magee ()
Additional contact information
Robert G. Magee: The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss)

Journal of Brand Management, 2022, vol. 29, issue 6, No 3, 538-555

Abstract: Abstract Understanding consumers’ worldview beliefs can lead to more effective brand communication. Study 1 demonstrates that addressing consumers’ worldview beliefs directly in brand CSR communications can offset the influence of their trait skepticism toward persuasive messages. Study 2 provides evidence that worldview beliefs function independently of trait skepticism in predicting brand attitudes, particularly concerning brand warmth. Worldview beliefs can also account for an apparent relationship between consumers’ skepticism and their attribution of motives to a firm. Thus, the theoretical contribution underscores the importance of understanding consumers’ worldview beliefs as a construct that is distinct from trait skepticism. For managers, the manuscript offers guidance in ways to fend off possible consumer skepticism when crafting environment-related CSR communication. In terms of a methodological contribution, consumers’ attributions of a firm’s motives typically involve measuring a mixture of altruistic and firm-oriented motives, and the attributions can be assessed more precisely by using separate unipolar measures instead of relying on typical bipolar measures.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility; Skepticism; Worldview; Persuasion; Environmental messages; Measurement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41262-022-00277-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:jobman:v:29:y:2022:i:6:d:10.1057_s41262-022-00277-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/journal/41262

DOI: 10.1057/s41262-022-00277-7

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Brand Management is currently edited by Joachim Kernstock, Shaun M. Powell, Mark Davies and Ur a Golob

More articles in Journal of Brand Management from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().