The effect of authenticity and social distance on CSR activity

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to make a distinction between two types of authenticity (indexical vs iconic), the influence of both of which on the consumer’s inference of companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) motivation is determined. Meanwhile, the consumer inference of CSR activities can be affected by the situational context within which the CSR activities are contained. Therefore, the effect of the interaction between the authenticity type and the given social distance (based on the construal level theory) was also examined. Design/methodology/approach The study conducted a 2 × 2 between-subjects design experiment to examine the effects of authenticity type (indexical/iconic) and social distance (close/distant) on the perceived motive of the CSR information in a scenario. Findings The findings showed significant main effect of authenticity type but no significant main effect of social distance on persuasion knowledge. Participants in the indexical authenticity condition perceived a higher degree of persuasion knowledge than the participants in the iconic authenticity condition. Social distance moderated the effect of authenticity type such that for indexical authenticity, there was a significant difference on persuasion knowledge when the social distance was large. However, for iconic authenticity, the perception of persuasion knowledge was not significantly different between a large distance and a close distance. Originality/value The study identified the type of authenticity that is mainly perceived as a result of CSR activities and also determined its relation to the social distance dimension to infer a firm’s CSR motives.

How authenticity of corporate social responsibility affects organizational attractiveness: Stakeholder perceptions of organizational ideology

“…In order to capture the diverse stakeholder relationship of a company with its stakeholders, the sample of the study was chosen from the undergraduate students who can evaluate the company case in the scenario from the perspectives of its prospective employee, customer, or investor. Student sample is a reliable source of data than most sources (Wheeler et al, 2014) and frequently used to measure CSR authenticity in the literature (e.g., Alhouti et al, 2016; Lim & Yang, 2016; Zasuwa, 2016). Therefore, a random sample of 1000 undergraduate business students were accessed by contacting the faculty secretaries of four private universities in Turkey.…”

“…The studies in the literature evaluate the motives of CSR through diverse attribution referents or signals such as managers' ethical values (Ogunfowora et al, 2018), the knowledge of individuals about the company and its history of CSR (Alhouti et al, 2016), whether the related company practices are certified by a third party (indexical) or based on its own experiences (iconic) (Lim & Yang, 2016) and so on. From the aforementioned conformity perspective of Lehman et al (2019) p. 13, the attribution referent is found at the “outside of the entity” and considers whether this entity meets the expectations and norms of its social category.…”

Theme and authenticity: experiencing heritage at The Venetian

“…Recently, several works have been written on the relationship between marketing strategies, consumer behavior and authenticity (Grayson and Martinec, 2004; Lim and Yang, 2016). Fritz et al 's (2017) extensive literature review shows that brand authenticity positively affects brand relationship quality, which is in turn able to influence consumers' behavioral intentions.…”

CSR in China: Does Being Close to the Central or Local Government Matter?

“…Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a key criterion for gauging corporate performance in the business environment, magnifying the importance of social obligations [1]. According to previous studies, many factors affect CSR.…”