Do consumers really care about organisational motives behind CSR? The moderating role of trust in the company

Grzegorz Zasuwa

Social Responsibility Journal, 2018, vol. 15, issue 8, 977-991

Abstract: Purpose - Literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) posits that organisational motives underlying corporate social initiatives play a key role in stakeholder responses to these activities. However, individuals do not always make attributions. This study aims to examine when CSR attributions shape consumer reactions to CSR initiatives. Design/methodology/approach - Drawing on attribution theory and relevant literature on consumer trust, this study proposes a framework for explaining when attributions shape reactions to CSR initiatives. To test this framework, the study uses data from a random sample of 512 Polish consumers. Findings - The results show that consumer responses to corporate social initiatives are largely independent of perceived corporate motivation when a consumer has a high trust in the firm. However, a low level of initial trust triggers causal thinking and its effects. Specifically, if a firm lacks credibility, self-serving attributions negatively influence consumer outcomes of social initiatives, but they remain neutral when trust is high. Accordingly, when trust is low, other-serving attributions have greater effects on the initiative outcomes than when trust is high. Originality/value - The paper provides important insights into CSR literature by showing that initial trust in the company is a salient variable that moderates the link between CSR attributions and consumer responses to these actions. This role of trust has been largely unexplored as past studies considered trust in the firm to be a key outcome of corporate social performance.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility; Consumer responses to CSR; Corporate social initiatives; CSR attributions; Organizational motives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:eme:srjpps:srj-08-2017-0140

DOI: 10.1108/SRJ-08-2017-0140

Access Statistics for this article

Social Responsibility Journal is currently edited by Prof David Crowther

More articles in Social Responsibility Journal from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().