Do CSR Messages Resonate? Examining Public Reactions to Firms’ CSR Efforts on Social Media

Gregory D. Saxton (), Lina Gomez (), Zed Ngoh (), Yi-Pin Lin () and Sarah Dietrich ()
Additional contact information
Gregory D. Saxton: York University
Lina Gomez: Universidad del Este
Zed Ngoh: University at Buffalo, SUNY
Yi-Pin Lin: University at Buffalo, SUNY
Sarah Dietrich: University at Buffalo, SUNY

Journal of Business Ethics, 2019, vol. 155, issue 2, No 3, 359-377

Abstract: Abstract We posit a key goal of firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts is to influence reputation through carefully crafted communicative practices. This trend has accelerated with the rise of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, which are essentially public message networks that organizations are leveraging to engage with concerned audiences. Given the large number of messages sent on these sites, only some will be effective and achieve broad public resonance. Building on signaling theory, this paper asks whether and how messages conveying CSR-related topics resonate with the public and, if so, which CSR topics and signal qualities are most effective. We test our hypotheses using data on public reactions to Fortune 500 companies’ CSR-focused Twitter feeds, using the retweeting (sharing) of firms’ messages as a proxy for public resonance. We find resonance is positively associated with messages that convey CSR topics such as the environment or education, those that make the topic explicit through use of hashtags, and those that tap into existing social movement discussions.

Keywords: Corporate reputation; Corporate social responsibility; CSR; CSR communication; Signaling theory; Social media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-017-3464-z Abstract (text/html)
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:kap:jbuset:v:155:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-017-3464-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3464-z

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().