Perceived authenticity and corporate legitimacy of Internet portal CSR activities: focused on Korean Naver user

ABSTRACT

As the global market for Internet portal services expands, there is a growing interest in identifying corporate social responsibility considering the social influence and business characteristics of Internet portal operators. This study explores the diverse dimensions of CSR of IPOs, examines how CSR efforts affect CSR authenticity in each dimension, and investigates whether CSR authenticity mediates the effects of CSR efforts on corporate legitimacy. In addition, by setting the respondents’ political orientation as the moderator, conditional indirect effect of CSR authenticity was further confirmed. An online survey was conducted on of Korean Naver users who actively use Internet portal services. Among the various CSR efforts of IPOs, strengthening of democratic contributions, universal service delivery, and consumer protection were shown to increase both cognitive and socio-political legitimacy through CSR authenticity. In particular, the effect of CSR efforts on cognitive legitimacy through perception of CSR authenticity was significantly higher in users with progressive political orientation. This study is significant in that it theoretically systematizes the CSR dimensions considering the complex business nature and business characteristics of IPOs and provides empirical results and implications for CSR activities that future IPOs should focus on, which can increase corporate legitimacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Internet portal
• corporate social responsibility
• CSR authenticity
• corporate legitimacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the MSIT (Ministry of Science and ICT), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program (IITP-2020-0-01749) supervised by the IITP (Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation), and also this work was supported by the Soonchunhyang University Research Fund.

Notes on contributors

Kyu Tae Kwak

Kyu Tae Kwak is an assistant professor in the Department of Global Culture Industry at Soonchunhyang University. He received his Ph.D. in Business Administration at Yonsei University, Republic of Korea. His research interests are media management, platform economy, and creativity and innovation [email: [email protected]]

Seung Yeop Lee

Seung Yeop Lee is an assistant professor in the Department of Media Communication at Pukyong National University. He received his Ph.D. in the Graduate School of Information at Yonsei University, Republic of Korea. His current research interests include social media, media competition, and Internet portal services [email: [email protected]]

You Jin Song

You Jin Song is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Media and Communication School of Korea University. She received her degree of Master of Communications in Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Korea University, Republic of Korea. Her research interests are new media and consumer behavior [email: [email protected]]

Sang Woo Lee

Sang Woo Lee is a professor of Graduate School of Information at Yonsei University in Korea. He received his Ph.D. in the Department of Telecommunication from Indiana University at Bloomington. His research interests are media business, media usage, and media policy [email: [email protected]].