How Much Should a Corporation Communicate About Corporate Social Responsibility? Reputation and Amount of Information Effects on Stakeholders’ CSR-Induced Attributions

Abstract

This study investigates how much corporations should communicate about their corporate social responsibility (CSR) to stakeholders. It is important to know how much a corporation should communicate about its CSR, because over-communicating CSR may cause stakeholders to question the motivations (CSR-induced intrinsic and extrinsic attributions) of the corporation’s CSR engagement. Through an experiment (N = 372), the effects of corporate reputation and the amount communicated about CSR on CSR-induced attributions are investigated. Findings show that neither the amount of CSR communication nor corporate reputation influences stakeholders’ CSR-induced attributions. The findings of this study suggest that corporations may choose to spend less time and money trying to communicate about their CSR engagement, because it does not influence stakeholders’ CSR-induced attributions.