The Effect of CSR Fit and CSR Authenticity on the Brand Attitude

Songmi Kim,Heejung Lee

doi:10.3390/su12010275

Abstract

This study examined consumer evaluation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities with a focus on the authenticity and fit of CSR activities and analyzed the influence of consumers’ individual perception based on CSR involvement. We carried out an empirical survey to test the hypotheses presented by a scenario test using a questionnaire of 315 college students. The results showed that higher CSR fit has a positive effect on CSR authenticity and brand attitude. As a result of verifying the moderating effect of CSR involvement, the higher the CSR involvement is, the lower the impact of CSR fit on CSR authenticity. Therefore, consumers with high CSR involvement are less affected by CSR fit in evaluating the authenticity of CSR.

Highlights

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities involve corporate social contributions and are considered strategic elements of the company’s sustainable growth and are recognized as essential for corporate management activities
The results show that all average variance extracted (AVE) values exceed the squared correlations for each pair of constructs, providing sufficient evidence of discriminant validity
As a result of verifying the moderating effect of CSR involvement, the results indicate that the higher the CSR involvement is, the lower the effect of CSR conformity on CSR authenticity (H4)

Summary

Introduction

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities involve corporate social contributions and are considered strategic elements of the company’s sustainable growth and are recognized as essential for corporate management activities. Consumers’ awareness of corporate CSR activities and their participation in CSR have continued to increase, but some previous studies have shown that consumer evaluations of corporate CSR activities are not positive [5,6,7]. This is because many consumers perceive CSR as a marketing activity to improve a company’s image, and they doubt whether it truly contributes to society. In other words, when consumers perceive that a company is carrying out CSR activities for strategic gain, they are skeptical of the company’s CSR activities and, as a result, negatively evaluate the CSR activities

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