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

Gain Park,Hyun Soon Park

doi:10.3390/su13010047

Gain Park, Hyun Soon Park

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13010047

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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.

Highlights

China is an attractive market for global enterprises due to the cost of human resources and large domestic market size as well as its economic power
The results showed that the effect of social distance perception on sustainability campaign evaluations was not statistically significant (β(SE) = −0.09(0.05), p = 0.09) (H1)
The results showed that social distance perception significantly affected company evaluations (β(SE) = −0.13(0.06), p < 0.05), which indicates that people with higher social distance perception from a company are more likely to show negative company evaluations, compared to people with lower social distance perception (H2)

Summary

Introduction

China is an attractive market for global enterprises due to the cost of human resources and large domestic market size as well as its economic power. Unlike the advantages of its business environment, the negative consumer sentiment from foreign brands has presented challenges and notable disadvantages to foreign enterprises in China. Chinese consumers and the government push foreign firms to take more sustainability responsibilities with higher consumer expectations and stricter sustainability regulations for foreign firms [2,3]. Such tendencies accelerated after the Beijing Olympics, which promoted civic participation in

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