The attribution effects of CSR motivations on brand advocacy: psychological distance matters!

ABSTRACT

Companies are becoming increasingly involved in corporate social responsibility (CSR) to enhance their self- rather than public interests, and this has made CSR ambiguous when considering organizational goodwill. This study therefore investigated the relative effects of CSR motivations on brand advocacy while considering psychological distance as a moderating variable. Two between-subject experiments were conducted using coffee shop customers in the United States as participants. The findings revealed that customers demonstrate more brand advocacy toward a company when they believe the company has conducted a CSR activity with a public-serving motivation than when they believe the company has conducted a CSR activity with a firm-serving motivation. Furthermore, customers demonstrate greater brand advocacy with respect to public-serving motivations when a firm’s spatial or temporal CSR initiative distances are low (when there are local or present benefits, respectively). However, customers demonstrate greater brand advocacy with respect to firm-serving motivations when a company conducts a CSR initiative with a low social distance (when there are in-group benefits).

摘要

随着越来越多的公司为了自身利益而非公共利益参与到企业社会责任中，使得当提及组织商誉时，企业社会责任的动机变得模棱两可。本文将心理距离作为调节变量，研究企业社会责任动机对品牌拥护的影响。文中对美国咖啡店的顾客进行了两次受试者间实验，结果表明，与以服务公司自身利益为动机相比，顾客认为当公司以公共服务为动机开展企业社会责任活动时，他们会更加拥护品牌。此外，当企业社会责任活动中的空间或时间距离较小时（分别为“本地”或“当前利益”），顾客对以公共服务为动机的公司表现出更多的品牌拥护。有趣的是，当企业社会责任活动中的社会距离较低时（内部利益），顾客对以服务自身利益为动机的公司表现出更多的品牌拥护。

KEYWORDS:

• Corporate social responsibility
• brand advocacy
• psychological distance
• hospitality

关键词:

• 企业社会责任
• 品牌拥护
• 心理距离
• 热情好客

Acknowledgment

The authors wish to express their gratitude to the Editors and Reviewers for their most helpful comments, Assoc. Prof. Manuela López for her useful input, Faizan Alam, Dong Xuan (Jerry) and Zhou Ying (Joy) for Chinese translation. This research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-113469GB-I00) and Junta de Castilla y León (CLU-2019-03).

Disclosure statement

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