CSR Unconscious Consumption by Generation Z in the COVID-19 Era—Responsible Heretics Not Paying CSR Bonus?

Radka Macgregor Pelikánová,Martin Hála

doi:10.3390/jrfm14080390

Radka Macgregor Pelikánová, Martin Hála

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm14080390

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a myriad of challenges and opportunities and has influenced the modern concept of sustainability as projected into the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the underlying multi-stakeholder model. The new generation of consumers, Generation Z, has progressively increased its participation in the market and its shopping trends have been impacting the entire CSR scenery. However, little is known about their attitudes, consumption preferences and expectations. In Spring 2021, this induced a pioneering case study survey involving members of Generation Z, students from a private university in Prague, focusing on their (lack of) readiness to pay any “CSR bonus”. The principal research aim was to study and understand the rather surprising unwillingness of a solvent part of the new generation of consumers to support CSR during the COVID-19 era by paying at least a symbolic CSR bonus. A formal survey involving a questionnaire, replied to by 228 students, out of which 18 totally rejected the CSR bonus, was assessed via contingency tables. It was accompanied by a complementary questioning via an informal interview and glossing. This plethora of data was processed by meta-analysis and lead to an unexpected proposition: prima facie sustainability heretics denying to pay any CSR bonus can be conscious consumers and responsible and progressive supporters of the sustainability and CSR. Their rejection is a deontological cry in a desert for more transparency, trust and the rule of law.

Highlights

The Roots, Evolution and Presence of Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)The idea of maintaining order, enjoying appropriate consumption in a long-term basis and assuming at least the collective responsibility is intimately linked to the evolution of human society
7.9% of students indicated 0% for the CSR bonus. This led to a logical question whether this denial of the CSR bonus payment depended upon the age, gender or the origin, or was at least influenced by them in a statistically significant manner
It revealed that the inclination to pay or not to pay the CSR bonus statistically depended upon the age, i.e., the relative frequency of students declining to pay any CSR bonus differed in age groups

Summary

Introduction

The Roots, Evolution and Presence of Sustainability and CSRThe idea of maintaining order, enjoying appropriate consumption in a long-term basis and assuming at least the collective responsibility is intimately linked to the evolution of human society. The 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“UDHR”) with its human rights dimension of the social dimension of the concept of sustainability was soon confronted with rather pragmatic concerns regarding the need to balance available resources with the increasing world population (Meadows et al 1972) and social progressive values in the context of the political awareness under the auspices of “communitarism” (Pelikánová et al 2021) This rather settled picture was challenged by a set of crises in the 1970s and the move from Keynesian economic theory, advancing government intervention and focusing on the interaction between savings and investment, to neoliberalist economic ideology championing privatization, deregulation, austerity and reduction in government spending (Balcerzak and Pelikánová 2020). The reality is more complex and the current COVID-19 pandemic and its multi-spectral impact along with the emergence of the new consumer generation—Generation Z makes it even more Byzantine

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