Public Welfare or Commercial Product? Social Enterprise Consumer Behaviors

Abstract

Most social-enterprise-related studies examined commercialized and public-welfare- related nature of nonprofit organizations from an organizational perspective. However, only few studies have explored the social enterprise products and services from a consumer perspective. The present study employed the decomposed theory of planned behavior as a basis to deconstruct public welfare and product factors and analyzed the behavioral intentions of consumers when purchasing social enterprise products and services. Additionally, this study used a cross-level perspective to examine the role of reference groups and adopted a hierarchical linear model for verification. The experimental results suggested that consumer behavioral intention increases with the level of perceived behavioral control. Attitude was found to be the main factor that influences consumer purchases of social enterprise products and services. Furthermore, consumers considered the opinions of members of their reference groups when purchasing social enterprise products; however, such groups did not directly influence the purchase intentions of comsumers. Organizations can communicate service concepts and strengthen product links by highlighting the public-welfare-related nature of social enterprises. Social enterprises should also increase the transparency of organizational operations to enhance consumer confidence in social enterprise products and the positive connectivity of public welfare.