Corporate Social Responsibility Beyond Borders: U.S. Consumer Boycotts of a Global Company Over Sweatshop Issues in Supplier Factories Overseas

Abstract

The current research examines the effects of individualizing moral foundations (i.e., fairness and care) on consumer boycotts against the U.S. company that is entangled in an alleged sweatshop issue at a supplier’s factory in a developing country. On the basis of moral foundations theory, the current study tests six hypotheses that demonstrate the theoretical mechanism by which individualizing moral foundations have an impact on consumer boycott intentions through blame attributions and anger. Using a representative U.S. sample of 1,124 people, a national survey was conducted to test the proposed structural equation model. As predicted, results of mediation analysis showed that individualizing foundations, consisted of the fairness/care values, led to boycott intentions fully mediated by blame attribution and anger.

The social regulation of corporate social irresponsibility: Reviewing the contribution of corporate reputation

“…anger, alert, surprise, worry, confusion), we identified ‘anger’ as the most common emotion explored. Stakeholders’ anger has been associated with increased likelihood that they will perceive CSI more negatively (Choi & Lin, 2009; Kim & Cameron, 2011; Lim & Shim, 2019; Sandlin & Gracyalny, 2018; Voliotis et al., 2016). Broadly, research concludes that heightened negative stakeholder emotions lead to the amplification of reputation decline, as stakeholders become aware, and pay more attention to, information which elicits negative emotion.…”

“…Skarmeas & Leonidou, 2013; Xie & Bagozzi, 2019) or decreased sales (e.g. Lim & Shim, 2019; Russell et al., 2016). Some studies proposed that consumer resistance following negative news about the company will increase the probability of protests and enhance negative word‐of‐mouth (Trautwein & Lindenmeier, 2019).…”

Linking corporate social irresponsibility with workplace deviant behaviour: mediated by moral outrage

“…Mediation of moral outrage between external corporate social irresponsibility and organisational workplace deviant behaviour. MO is one of the most powerful emotions that drive human behaviour to action (Lim and Shim, 2019). Existing literature suggests that corporate social irresponsibility drives MO positively in such a way that observers demonstrate assertive retaliatory behaviour to punish the socially irresponsible organisation.…”

Do consumers care about morality? A review and framework for understanding morality's marketplace influence

“…For example, when a firm engages in unethical practices, consumers report a lower willingness to purchase their products (Miller & Sturdivant, 1977) and a greater willingness to spread negative word of mouth about them (Krishna & Kim, 2020). Similarly, ethical transgressions can lead consumers to boycott a firm's products or services (Balabanis, 2013;Lim & Shim, 2019), protest the firm (Grappi et al, 2013), or even be willing to steal from the firm (Rotman et al, 2018). Notably, these punishing behaviors seem especially likely when consumers expect the company to be ethical (e.g., when a non-profit firm commits an ethical transgression; Hornsey et al, 2020).…”

“…Previous research has shown that anger and disgust are distinct emotions that can impart independent effects on attitudes in general (Briñol et al, 2018) and robust effects on attitude moralization in particular (Hutcherson & Gross, 2011;Molho et al, 2017;. For example, the more anger consumers reported at a company's poor treatment of its employees, the more these consumers moralized their attitudes, which led to greater intentions to boycott the firm (Lim & Shim, 2019). In the domain of food consumption, the more vegetarians felt disgust toward killing animals, the more they moralized their negative attitudes toward animal farming, which led to a greater likelihood of boycotting animal products (Rozin et al, 1997; for a similar example with cigarettes, see Rozin & Singh, 1999).…”