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Consumers’ Responses to Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives: The Mediating Role of Consumer–Company Identification

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Abstract

In order to explore the mechanism of consumer responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR), this paper constructs a research framework including CSR, consumer–company identification (CCI), consumer responses, and fit, and tests the framework using a scene-questionnaire survey. Empirical results demonstrate that CSR not only has positive influence on consumer purchase intention, recommend intention, and loyalty directly, but also has indirect positive influence on consumer purchase intention and recommend intention through CCI. The influencing process of CSR on CCI is moderated by fit and the moderating direction is different owing to product types. For the products whose association preference is positive, fit can positively moderate the relationship between CSR and CCI, while for products whose association preference is negative, the moderating role will be negative.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Projects No. 71272232 and 70902053).

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  1. School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, Mail Box 02-30, 430072, Wuhan, Hubei, People’s Republic of China

    Xinming Deng & Yang Xu

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  1. Xinming Deng
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Correspondence to Xinming Deng.

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Deng, X., Xu, Y. Consumers’ Responses to Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives: The Mediating Role of Consumer–Company Identification. J Bus Ethics 142, 515–526 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2742-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2742-x

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