Abstract
PurposeThis paper explores how companies can improve consumer attitudes towards corporate social responsibility (CSR) messages and companies by designing the content of the message, which should provide specific information and improve social topic awareness among consumers. The paper also explores the mediating role of message authenticity between the CSR message content and consumer attitudes towards the information and the company.Design/methodology/approach302 participants evaluated the website of a fictitious company that included information about its CSR activities. The authors collected data through a questionnaire of Likert-type and dichotomous scales and contrasted the hypotheses with a causal model, analysing the relationships among variables through structural equation modelling (SEM) with the software EQS 6.1.FindingsThe findings suggest that information specificity and social topic awareness improve consumer perceptions of message authenticity. The findings also show that message authenticity improves consumer trust and attitudes towards the information and the company. Attitude towards the information, message authenticity and social topic awareness show the largest impacts on trust and attitude towards the company, while information specificity also has a positive although smaller effect.Originality/valueIntegrating information specificity and social topic awareness within the conceptual model presented in this paper, based on the heuristic-systematic model (HSM) and attribution theory, allows researchers and practitioners to close the gap between companies' CSR activities and consumers' perceptions, attitudes and behaviours.
Highlights
By engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR), companies can generate favorable consumer attitudes and better support behaviors because it strengthens the relationship with these stakeholders
The findings demonstrated that trust and attitude towards the company were highly affected by information specificity, social topic awareness, message authenticity and attitude towards the information contained in the CSR message
The findings of the study show that working to convey a sense of authenticity through CSR communication greatly improves consumer attitude towards the information contained in the CSR message
Summary
By engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR), companies can generate favorable consumer attitudes and better support behaviors because it strengthens the relationship with these stakeholders. Previous literature has argued that showing specific information (i.e., information on how much money and resources the company contributes to the social cause) or providing information that increases social topic awareness among consumers (i.e., information that increases consumers’ knowledge about the social cause) is beneficial for companies and it has positive effects on consumer attitudinal and behavioral responses This is so because messages that are designed to be specific and provide social topic awareness are expected to improve consumer attributions of CSR significantly (Forehand and Grier, 2003; Pomering et al, 2013; Pomering and Johnson, 2009). The integration of information specificity and social topic awareness within a conceptual model that relates message authenticity to consumer attitudinal responses will contribute to previous literature significantly since it will allow researchers and practitioners to close the gap between companies’ CSR activities and consumers’ perceptions, attitudes and behaviors. The paper concludes by presenting the most relevant conclusions, implications, limitations and future lines of research derived from the study
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