What Motivates Stakeholders to Demand Corporate Social Responsibility: A Survey Experiment

Abstract

Businesses are facing consistent pressures from stakeholders to be socially responsible although the economic benefits of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been found to be mixed. We aim to reveal stakeholders’ motivations for demanding CSR by studying stakeholders’ stated preferences on companies’ contribution to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in three different contexts, purchasing, investing, and job-seeking. We conducted conjoint survey experiments—embedded information treatments targeting the public in Japan (n = 12,098) in 2019 and 2020. The results showed that stakeholders demanded corporations to contribute to international-related issues rather than domestic-related issues. Stakeholders’ support was low when the companies profited from contributing to the SDGs. These results suggest that social context reflects the preferences of stakeholders on corporates’ SDG activities. Overall, raising awareness had effects on stakeholders’ support and to what extent the information affected the decisions of stakeholders was varied by stakeholders.

Information and values in the decision-making support: A systematic literature review in the corporate sustainability context

“…In this environment, information related to Ethical-Moral Values: respect for employees, minority shareholders, and external stakeholders, in addition to conduct guided by transparency and combating corrupt practices (Fallan, 2015;Hawrysz & Maj, 2017;Vázquez et al, 2013) and Environmental Values: values centered on nature, preservation and environmental justice, environmental awareness and environmental performance (Diddi & Niehm, 2017;Elliot et al, 2016;Ferramosca, 2019) are captured and treated by information systems of the company and shared among the organization's managers (De Klerk & De Villiers, 2012;Leal et al, 2013;Jo & Kim, 2008). This movement aims to contribute to adding value to the company's strategic activity (Cohen et al, 2017;El Haddad et al, 2020) and, more specifically, to support decisionmaking on which sustainability practices should be implemented or maintained (Vieira, 2014;Yamane & Kaneko, 2021).…”

“…On the other hand, the focus "Dimensions of sustainability" presents a greater connection with concerns inherent to the different perspectives of sustainability, identified in the texts, mainly, by the dimensions proposed in the Triple Bottom Line (Environmental Preservation, Social Equity, and Balanced Economic Growth). The dimensions of sustainability represent the contemporary paradigm of sustainability, and were the predominant approach of the analysis corpus (Bolis et al, 2021;Silva & Razzolini, 2021;Yamane & Kaneko, 2021).…”

“…It should be noted that the cultural context in which organizations and stakeholders are inserted showed a significant relationship with the creation of informational strategies. This is because issues such as regionalism, religious beliefs, political scenarios and local social norms are characterized as influential drivers of the interpretation of sustainability information, and as such can be explored in the formulation of communication strategies aimed at more conscious decision-making (Bowerman & Sharma, 2016;Cohen et al, 2017;El Haddad et al, 2020;Yamane & Kaneko, 2021).…”

“…Its adoption is driven by changing societal values, new institutional and policy expectations regarding the environment, and balanced financial growth considerations (El Haddad et al, 2020). Sustainability represents the expansion of organizational focus, which shifts its emphasis from economic performance to the consideration of other values in decision making (Yamane & Kaneko, 2021). For Elkington (2011), sustainability indicated, at the end of the 20th century, the transition from rigid organizational values -profit maximization -to malleable values, especially of an environmental and social nature.…”

Dataset: Japan household panel survey on Sustainable Development Goals 2019-2020

“…In these online surveys, respondents were requested to participate in 1) a conjoint survey, and 2) a household survey. For conjoint surveys, please refer to our previous work [1 , 2] . The dataset described in the current paper comprises household surveys.…”