Beyond Warm Glow: The Risk-Mitigating Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Abhi Bhattacharya (), Valerie Good (), Hanieh Sardashti () and John Peloza ()
Additional contact information
Abhi Bhattacharya: University of Groningen
Valerie Good: Michigan State University
Hanieh Sardashti: University of North Florida
John Peloza: University of Kentucky

Journal of Business Ethics, 2021, vol. 171, issue 2, No 7, 317-336

Abstract: Abstract Corporate social responsibility (CSR) positively impacts relationships between firms and customers. Previous research construes this as an outcome of customers’ warm glow that results from supporting firms’ benevolence. The current research demonstrates that beyond warm glow, CSR positively impacts firms’ sales through mitigating their customers’ perceptions of purchase risk. We demonstrate this effect across three conditions in which customers’ perceived risk of purchase is heightened, using both secondary data and two lab experiments. Under conditions of greater purchase risk (i.e., recessions, a service context, and longer-term consumer commitments), CSR positively impacts both sales and customer purchase intentions to a greater extent than in conditions of lower purchase risk. In addition to measuring purchase risk as the mediating process behind these effects, we demonstrate that the effect of CSR on sales is stronger for those CSR activities that signal a stakeholder orientation.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility (CSR); Risk mitigation; Customer orientation; Benevolence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-020-04445-0 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:171:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-020-04445-0

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

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-020-04445-0

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 ().