Corporate Social Responsibility Communications on Social Media and Consumers’ Brand Engagement: A Case Study of Hotels in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to investigate how the communication of the three major types of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives (i.e. environmental, societal and stakeholders’ CSR) on Facebook affect consumers’ brand engagement. A preliminary content analysis on 100 hotels’ Facebook was conducted to identify the current usage of Facebook for CSR communication among hotel firms in Hong Kong. Then, a consumer survey was conducted with 314 Facebook users in order to collect data for testing the conceptual framework. The empirical findings unveil that disclosure of societal CSR on Facebook has a strong explanatory power of consumer brand engagement, whereas that of environmental CSR was close to reasonable. This study provides insights into hotel firms’ usage of Facebook as a platform for CSR communication. The findings might ease industry practitioners’ apprehension of disclosure of CSR initiatives on Facebook.

摘要

本文旨在研究Facebook上三种主要类型的企业社会责任倡议的传播 (即“环境”、“社会”和“利益相关者”的企业社会责任) 如何影响消费者的品牌参与。首先，本文对100家酒店的Facebook进行了内容分析，以确定目前香港酒店企业使用Facebook进行企业社会责任沟通的情况。然后，本文对314名Facebook用户进行了一项消费者调查，以测试本文提出的概念框架。结果表明，Facebook上有关“社会”的企业社会责任的披露对消费者品牌参与具有较强的解释力，而有关“环境”的企业社会责任的披露则接近合理。本研究为酒店企业利用Facebook作为企业社会责任沟通平台提供了视角。这些发现会缓解业内人士对Facebook披露企业社会责任举措的担忧。

KEYWORDS:

• Brand engagement
• CSR communications
• facebook
• hotels
• social media

关键词:

• 品牌参与
• 企业社会责任沟通
• Facebook
• 酒店
• 社交媒体

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cheukhei Danny Chung

Cheukhei Danny Chung is BSc (Hons) student in Hotel Management in the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR (E-mail: [email protected]).

Lisa Gao

Lisa Gao is Assistant Professor in the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR. She holds a Ph.D. in hospitality management from the Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on corporate social responsibility issues and consumer behavior (E-mail: [email protected]).

Daniel Leung

Daniel Leung is Assistant Professor in the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR. He has authored/co-authored a number of research articles in first-tier academic journals. His research interests are in the areas of electronic word-of-mouth, electronic marketing as well as hotel and tourism website evaluation (E-mail: [email protected]).