Can an organization's philanthropic donations encourage consumers to give? The roles of gratitude and boundary conditions

Abstract

This study examines whether an organization's charitable donation will prompt consumers who closely identify with the organization to give to the charity as well. We posit that identifying with a benefactor will enhance the perception that consumers are involved in the donation process, which evokes grateful feelings. We also predict that the amount of the organization's donation will positively moderate the influence of organization identification on charity-evoked feelings of gratitude, while attitude toward the organization's charity will positively moderate the gratitude-donation relationship. In Study 1, we show how gratitude arises in the context of corporate social responsibility by demonstrating the mediating role of perceived donation contribution in the relationship between organization identification and gratitude. In Study 2, we demonstrate that organization identification has a significant indirect effect on donation intention through gratitude. Multigroup analyses show that the identification-gratitude link is more salient when the organization commits to donating a larger amount of money to a charity. Furthermore, the impact of gratitude on donation intent is significantly stronger for individuals who hold a favorable attitude toward the organization's corporate social responsibility activity. Our findings indicate that an organization's charitable giving also encourages consumers to give to the community via vicariously felt gratitude.

A Importância Do Apego À Marca Para O Engajamento Em Causas De Responsabilidade Social Corporativa

“…The second experiment supports hypotheses H 3a and H 3b . This result is consistent with the results by Barone et al (2007) and Kwak and Kwon (2016). For contexts of strong attitude toward the cause, brand-cause congruence did not influence individuals' responses to support the cause, even though the intention to adhere to the cause is related to brand attachment.…”

“…Results from previous studies suggest that more positive attitudes toward the CSR cause lead to more positive consumer responses toward the brand, even when brand-cause congruence is low. However, attitude toward the cause may influence individuals' intention to adhere (Kwak & Kwon, 2016). We propose that more favorable attitudes toward the cause may mitigate the effect of low brand attachment and low brand-cause congruence.…”

“…Results of the first experiment suggest that the negative effect of brand-cause incongruence on intention to adhere to the CSR action was only significant for people with low brand attachment. Kwak and Kwon (2016) had reported that CSR actions encourage consumers who identify with the organization to support the cause, inspiring feelings of gratitude that motivate the intention to donate/support the action. If we extend the results obtained for brand attachment in the first experiment to identification with the organization, our results suggest that only individuals with high identification with the CSR action promoting company will likely contribute to the cause.…”

“…However, the abovementioned studies investigated only the effects of individuals' attitude toward the cause on the returns of CSR actions to the company, but not specifically toward the cause. Kwak and Kwon (2016) observed that, in addition to the identification between consumer and company, the attitude toward the cause also positively influences the intention to donate. The more positive the attitude toward the cause, the stronger the gratitude-donation relationship, and, consequently, the greater the individuals' intention to donate.…”

The Impact of Hedonic and Meaningful Messages on Sport Consumers’ Responses to Athlete Foundations: A Focus on Fan Identification Level

“…The results showed that people donate more raffle tickets to a foundation after witnessing the meaningful character of an athlete than they do after witnessing an athlete’s hedonic character. In the context of sport, numerous studies have measured fans’ prosocial intentions as approximations of actual behavior (Kim & Walker, 2013; Kwak & Kwon, 2016). Nevertheless, a recent study indicated that a greater degree of intention does not always lead to an actual behavior (Yoshida et al, 2015).…”