University of Twente Student Theses

What are your motives to engage in Corporate Social Responsibility and who is backing up your claims? : CSR communication: the effects of different CSR motives and third-party labeling on consumer outcomes

Nijenhuis, Saskia te (2021) What are your motives to engage in Corporate Social Responsibility and who is backing up your claims? : CSR communication: the effects of different CSR motives and third-party labeling on consumer outcomes.

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Abstract:	Organizations increasingly communicate about their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives to enhance consumer outcomes such as, positive attitude towards the company, higher corporate credibility and higher purchase intention. This research focuses on the four different CSR motives: values driven, strategic, stakeholder driven, egoistic and their effect on consumer outcomes. Next to motivation, CSR communication can include a third-party CSR label to enhance credibility and avoid skepticism, and this research focusses on the presence versus absence of third-party CSR labeling and its effect on consumer outcomes. Finally, this research focusses on organizational CSR communication that includes CSR motives and third-party CSR labeling simultaneously and its effect on consumer outcomes by hypothesizing that CSR communication including the stakeholder driven or egoistic CSR motive and a third-party CSR label, can have a counterproductive effect. Drawing on Expectancy Violation (EV) theory, consumers may have high expectations of the organizational CSR because of the CSR label that is used in CSR communication, and low expectations of the organizational CSR motives when perceived as stakeholder driven or egoistic. This may lead to negative expectation violation and therefore, lead to more negative attitude towards the company, lower corporate credibility and lower purchase intention label than when stakeholder driven, or egoistic CSR motives are not combined with a third-party CSR label in CSR communication. A 4 (CSR motives: values driven/strategic/stakeholder driven/egoistic) x 2 (third-party CSR labeling: no label vs. label) factorial experiment was conducted. The results show that no differences in consumer outcomes were found between the four CSR motives. In addition, for CSR communication including a label vs. no label, no differences in consumer outcomes were found as well. The hypothesized counterproductive effect of stakeholder driven or egoistic CSR motive in combination with the third-party label on consumer outcomes was not found.
Item Type:	Essay (Master)
Faculty:	BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:	05 communication studies
Programme:	Communication Studies MSc (60713)
Link to this item:	https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/85962
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