Corporate Social Responsibility Communications on Social Media and Consumers’ Brand Engagement: A Case Study of Hotels in Hong Kong

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper aims to investigate how the communication of the three major types of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives (i.e. environmental, societal and stakeholders’ CSR) on Facebook affect consumers’ brand engagement. A preliminary content analysis on 100 hotels’ Facebook was conducted to identify the current usage of Facebook for CSR communication among hotel firms in Hong Kong. Then, a consumer survey was conducted with 314 Facebook users in order to collect data for testing the conceptual framework. The empirical findings unveil that disclosure of societal CSR on Facebook has a strong explanatory power of consumer brand engagement, whereas that of environmental CSR was close to reasonable. This study provides insights into hotel firms’ usage of Facebook as a platform for CSR communication. The findings might ease industry practitioners’ apprehension of disclosure of CSR initiatives on Facebook.