The Effect of Participation Effort on CSR Participation Intention: The Moderating Role of Construal Level on Consumer Perception of Warm Glow and Perceived Costs

Yunjeong Ahn and Jieun Lee
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Yunjeong Ahn: School of Business Administration, Chung-Ang University, 84 Heukseok-ro, Seoul 06974, Korea
Jieun Lee: School of Business Administration, Chung-Ang University, 84 Heukseok-ro, Seoul 06974, Korea

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Consumer participation typically reduces consumer skepticism and leads to a positive response to corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Although many companies are encouraging consumers to participate in CSR activities, there is still insufficient research on the effectiveness of this strategy. That is, prior studies do not provide guidelines on the effectiveness of requiring consumers to participate in CSR activities. We examine the impact of the required participation effort on CSR participation intention, focusing on the differences in consumers’ perception of a warm glow feeling and costs according to their construal level. For this study, 107 participants were recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk. We tested hypotheses using a 2 (CSR participation effort) × 2 (construal level) between-subject analysis of variance (ANOVA), planned contrast analysis, and mediation analysis. The results indicate that for consumers with high construal levels who perceive participation efforts as warm glow, participation efforts have a positive impact on CSR participation intention. However, for those with low construal levels who perceive participation efforts as costs, high required efforts have a negative impact on their participation intention. Finally, we discuss the implications of these results, discuss the limitations, and suggest future research directions.

Keywords: consumer participation; construal level; warm glow; perceived costs; corporate social responsibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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