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Based on the chain liability and green halo effects, this study uses the perspective of multi-tier supply chain management to examine the impact mechanism and boundary conditions of suppliers' green innovation types on consumers' willingness to participate in value co-creation with focal firms from the perspective of multi-tier supply chain management.

Using four situational experiments, 660 participants were recruited in Credamo, and SPSS 23.0 was used for data analysis. Experiments 1a and 1b verify the effect of suppliers' green innovation on consumers' willingness to participate in value co-creation with focal firms; experiment 2 examines the mediating effect of green sincerity perception; and experiment 3 explores the moderating effect of innovation proactiveness.

The results show that suppliers' green innovation efforts are more sincere when they are substantive (vs. symbolic), thereby generating higher value co-creation intentions. As a driving force, innovation proactiveness moderates the influence of suppliers' green innovation types on consumer's willingness to co-create value with focal firms.

This study enriches the literature on green supply chain management (GSCM) and consumers' willingness to co-create value. Furthermore, this study provides firms with practical guidance to improve marketing performance and green innovation practices through multilevel GSCM.

This study aims to examine how employees’ perceptions of customer-related and employee-related corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives influence their job satisfaction. Further, the study investigates whether employees’ organizational commitment mediates this proposed relationship and, more importantly, tests how such mediated relationships change according to the level of employees’ perceptions of their company’s sincerity in investing in CSR activities.

This study used an online survey to collect data and collected a total of 490 responses for the main analysis. A regression analysis and standard path-analytic approaches described by Hayes (2013) were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.

Findings support the main effect of customer- and employee-related CSR on employees’ job satisfaction mediated by employees’ organizational commitment, as well as the moderating effect of the perceived sincerity of customer-related CSR but not employee-related CSR.

The current study focuses on comparing two types of CSR initiatives, i.e. employee- and customer-related, because these two groups are any company’s core stakeholders with the closest relationship to its operations, and they represent the internal and external stakeholders, respectively. Further, the current study investigates the moderating effect of employees’ perceptions of the sincerity of their company’s CSR initiatives on the relationship between the two types of CSR initiatives and employees’ job commitment.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of perceived overall justice and the moderating effect of self- and other-centered motives in the relationship between organizational corporate social responsibility (CSR) and organizational attractiveness using a sample of job applicants.

The hypotheses were tested using a 2-by-2 experimental design and a sample of 376 South Korean University students.

The results showed that organizational CSR positively influenced job applicants’ perceived overall justice. Moreover, it was found that perceived overall justice mediated the influence of CSR on organizational attractiveness. However, contrary to the hypotheses, the indirect effect of CSR on organizational attractiveness through perceived overall justice was significant only for job applicants who attributed self-centered motives to CSR.

As it was found that job applicants who attributed other-centered motives to organizational CSR had high levels of perceived overall justice regarding organizations, independent of the actual level of engagement in CSR, it is crucial that organizations show sincerity in executing CSR. In addition, small- and medium-sized organizations may not have sufficient resources for CSR, but it is especially crucial for them to focus on CSR activities that are aligned with their business, implement CSR programs consistently, and focus on CSR itself rather than on advertising in order to facilitate, among job applicants, the attribution of other-centered motives to their CSR.

From the perspective of overall justice and attributed motives, this study intensively explores the internal mechanism by which organizational engagement in CSR influences organizational attractiveness among job applicants. In practical terms, this study shows that it is important for organizations to consistently invest in CSR with authenticity, even when CSR activities are insubstantial and doing so may be attributed to self-centered motives. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to study how individuals assess responsibility during an uncontrollable event requiring collective action, using crises affecting service workers as contexts. Specifically, the authors examine what parties consumers hold responsible for ensuring service worker welfare following an uncontrollable event and determine what factors make customers more open to accepting responsibility for ensuring worker welfare themselves.

The authors surveyed a nationally representative sample of US consumers regarding their attitudes toward protecting service workers during COVID-19 and used regression analysis to identify factors that predict attributions of responsibility to customers. The authors also conducted an experiment (using a new crisis context) to determine whether certain key factors impact customer perceptions of their own responsibility for helping employees during an uncontrollable event.

The survey results show US consumers hold firms most responsible for worker welfare, followed by customers and, finally, government. When examining factors that drive attributions of responsibility for customers, perceptions of how sincere firms are in their efforts to help employees predict higher responsibility attributions, and experimental results confirm that higher perceived firm sincerity increases consumers’ own sense of responsibility toward workers.

This research identifies factors that affect consumer support for efforts to help service employees and collective action problems more generally.

This research highlights an under-studied crisis context – uncontrollable events that require collective action – and shows how consumers make assessments about their own responsibility (in addition to the responsibility of the service firm) in these contexts.

Drawing on symbolic interaction theory (SIT), this study aims to identify what makes corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication more favorable to customers in the chain restaurants context. Specifically, this study examines the direct relationships between the interactivity of CSR communication, brand trust and brand sincerity. In addition, the mediating role of brand trust (i.e. separate dimensions of brand reliability and intentions) and the moderated mediating role of self-congruity are explored.

A total of 418 US consumers with past experiences of participating in CSR campaigns organized by chain restaurants on social media were recruited using the online survey method of nonprobability sampling through Amazon Mechanical Turk in December 2021.

The results of this study revealed that the interactivity of CSR communication on social media affects brand sincerity; brand reliability and brand intentions mediate the positive effect of interactivity of CSR communication on brand sincerity; and customer’s self-congruity moderated the positive mediation effect via brand reliability.

Chain restaurant marketers need to understand the important role of interactivity as a key element of CSR communication on social media to help develop brand trust and brand sincerity in chain restaurants.

This study expands on SIT to support the symbolic benefits of interactive CSR communication on social media.

This study aims to assess the impact of functional green advertising receptivity and emotional green advertising receptivity on consumers' green purchase intention. The authors then examine the mediating role of perceived competence and perceived warmth. Furthermore, the authors explore the moderating effect of power distance belief (PDB) on the relationships between green advertising receptivity with different appeals and consumers' perceived competence and perceived warmth respectively.

Based on the online survey platform, a total of 468 responses were obtained in China from January to March 2022. 408 valid replies were collected and analyzed in this study. The research hypotheses were empirically verified with bootstrap approach.

The empirical results indicate that both functional green advertisi\ng receptivity and emotional green advertising receptivity are significantly positively correlated with green purchase intention, and perceived competence and perceived warmth play the mediating role. Besides, PDB significantly strengthens the relationship between functional green advertising receptivity and perceived competence, but weakens the incentive effect of emotional green advertising receptivity on perceived warmth.

The psychological mechanism of the receptivity of green advertising with different appeals affecting green purchase intention remains unclear. This is one of the first studies to uncover how functional green advertising receptivity and emotional green advertising receptivity influence green purchase intention. Besides, the impact of PDB on the formation process of consumer perception is also a black box. By clarifying and comparing the moderating role of PDB on the relationships between advertising receptivity with different appeals and consumers' perceived competence and perceived warmth, this study contributes to the research on the effectiveness of green advertising.

In the modern era, brand authenticity is one of the most powerful positioning strategies for sustainable business growth. This study investigated the impacts of perceived brand authenticity dimensions (i.e., quality commitment, heritage, sincerity) on brand love to predict Generation Y's behavior from the Asian context.

This is new empirical research that tested the proposed hypotheses through PLS-SEM, as PLS is the most robust technique for predicting consumer behavior. Importantly, consumers (of Generation Y) from five Asian countries contributed to this study, and data collected from 427 Asian millennials on global brands.

The results analysis revealed that perceived brand authenticity dimensions significantly impacted brand love, which positively affected Asian millennials' behavioral outcomes (i.e., continuous purchase intention and price premium).

This study investigated dimensions of perceived brand authenticity to predict Asian millennials' behavioral outcomes in a broader perspective. Future researchers may investigate a specific culture with a larger sample size to predict millennials behavior.

This study has several implications that guide the global managers of several service and manufacturing industries to develop various positioning and relationship strategies for global brands to target Asian markets effectively.

Using attribution theory, this is the first novel research study that empirically discussed the dimensions of perceived brand authenticity, brand love, and Asian millennials' behavior toward global brands.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the conditions under which US consumers, known for their “green” skepticism, are more (less) likely to respond favorably to a firm's environmental initiative in today's marketplace.

The research paper investigates whether the general positive impact derived from the implementation of societal initiatives found by other researchers carries over when specific environmental initiatives are put into operation. The authors test hypotheses related to consumer responses to information about a firm's environmental initiative with varied salience of its public‐ and self‐serving motives. Next, they test how consumer responses are affected by the level of perceived sincerity associated with a firm's environmental initiative. The role of brand commitment is also examined across both studies.

The results reveal that consumers use a rather skeptical approach when interpreting a firm's environmental initiative and that these responses vary based on the level of brand commitment, as well as how the initiative is presented to them.

The generalizability of results is currently limited to a particular brand with strong brand equity, large market share, and highly experiential service (Starbucks).

The authors provide insights into what marketers and policy makers should consider in the development of environmental initiatives, in order to increase the likelihood of positive consumer responses.

The present research contributes to the development (and application) of more accurate models of consumer responses to a firm's environmental initiative.

This study aims to develop a comprehensive conceptual framework to investigate how green brand positioning strategies positively impact consumer response. It focusses on uncovering the causal mechanism in which such effect is mediated by brand stereotypes. Additionally, it outlines the moderating role of construal level in this formation process.

Three experimental studies were conducted to examine the hypotheses. Study 1 tests the positive influence of green brand positioning on consumer response. Study 2 tests the dual mediating effect of warmth and competence in the relationship between green brand positioning and consumer response. Study 3 further examines the moderating role of construal level in the effects of green brand positioning on brand stereotypes.

The findings reveal that green emotional positioning strategies are predominantly stereotyped as warm while green functional positioning strategies are predominantly stereotyped as competent. Both warm and competent mediate the effects of green brand positioning on consumer response. Furthermore, a congruency between green emotional positioning and high-level construal, as well as the match between green functional positioning and low-level construal, leads to more warmth and competence perception.

This study contributes to green brand management literature by proposing a brand stereotype-based mechanism to explain how green brand positioning strategies trigger consumers’ stereotyping process, leading to positive consumer response. This study also identifies the construal level as a moderating variable that impacts consumers’ warmth and competence perceptions towards two kinds of green brand positioning strategies. Managerially, the findings of this study provide managerial ideas for developing green branding strategies.