Effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) fit and restaurant size: the mediating role of perceived effort

ABSTRACT

Despite extensive research on the effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) fit, little attention has been paid to this matter from a social – cognitive perspective of consumers’ moral judgments. This study focused on the perceived effort of a restaurant’s CSR to explain the role of consumers’ moral judgments. The objectives of this study were to enrich the CSR literature by examining if perceived effort mediates the relationship between CSR fit and loyalty intention and if such mediating path is dependent on – restaurant size. This study conducted a scenario-based experiment with a 2 (CSR fit: high vs. low) x 2 (restaurant size: small vs. large) between-subjects design and analyzed data with the PROCESS macro in SPSS for bias-corrected bootstrapping to test hypotheses. Findings suggested that, compared to low-fit CSRs, high-fit CSRs enhance perceived effort toward the restaurant, which in turn increases loyalty intention. The role of the restaurant size as a moderator received an insignificant but directional support that the CSR fit – perceived effort – loyalty intention pattern becomes more apparent with small restaurants than large restaurants. Restaurants might consider more investment in business core-related CSR initiatives to drive more favorable consumer responses, and small sized restaurants are encouraged to make CSR actions intently.

KEYWORDS:

• CSR fit
• restaurant size
• effort
• consumer
• loyalty intention

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Promotion Program of Sunchon National University.