Communicating Sustainability to Ethnocentric Consumers in China: Focusing on Social Distance from Foreign Corporations

Gain Park and Hyun Soon Park
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Gain Park: Department of Journalism and Media Studies, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA
Hyun Soon Park: Department of Media and Communication, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul 03063, Korea

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: This study examines the relationship between social distance perception and company/sustainability campaign evaluations. The study also investigates the moderating role of consumer ethnocentrism in the relationship between the variables. This study further compares the effects of construal message framing (high-level vs. low-level construal) on social distance perception. The SPSS PROCESS macro analysis revealed that social distance perception from a corporation negatively affects company evaluations. Moreover, the results demonstrated that consumer ethnocentrism significantly moderates the relationship between social distance perception and company/sustainability campaign evaluations. Finally, the results indicate that construal message framing significantly affects the level of social distance perception from the host of a sustainability campaign. This paper provides practical suggestions for corporates’ sustainability communications and adds to the literature on the reverse effect of construal level theory and social distance reduction.

Keywords: sustainability communication; construal level theory; consumer ethnocentrism; social distance; consumer evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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