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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.

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.

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.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to confirm the causal relationship, in an upward social comparison, of envy, loneliness and subjective well-being (SWB). Particularly, the authors address the mediating roles, each, of benign envy (BE) and malicious envy (ME) as different types of envy. In addition, the authors explore the grandiosity of users, in terms of narcissistic personalities, and whether it has discriminatory impacts on this causal relationship.

The authors re-enacted a situation that users confront on Facebook as a quasi-experiment to determine if there is an effectual relationship among variables in the path of upward comparison, envy, loneliness and SWB. First, the authors divided envy into BE and ME to examine its mediating role in the path of upward comparison and loneliness. Second, the authors examined the differentiated effects of both kinds of envy and loneliness on SWB. Finally, the authors determined if users’ grandiose, narcissistic behaviour has moderating effects on the path of each variable.

The results revealed that upward comparison has a positive effect on both kinds of envy; however, in the path of loneliness, only ME operated and played a mediating role. Furthermore, grandiosity had a partially significant moderating effect.

This study has the following theoretical implications. The mediating effect of envy was identified in the path of upward comparison, loneliness and SWB. Research limitation is as follows: this study could not effectively reflect individual differences. It is necessary to include individual difference variables in later research, including characteristics of social comparison.

This study has the following practical implications. Social comparison on Facebook poses a more serious problem than it does offline; therefore, users need to protect their own SWB. If users can actively cope with the information of others and selectively choose their upward comparison targets, they can reduce their loneliness and improve their SWB as expected in the hypotheses.

The “unfriending” events that occur on Facebook may be explained by the mediating phenomenon of ME. The research showed that the excessive narcissism of users on Facebook is an inconsistent information with real selves of users, thus triggering the ME, which causes avoidance from other Facebook users.

The authors have proven that social comparison and envy emotion are the causes of the loneliness, while the authors are on Facebook. Especially, the mediation role of BE and ME are discussed in a distinguished manner. Also, the authors confirmed that the influence of narcissism could further aggravate the problem of loneliness. Finally, the authors found that the variables of the study also affect the SWB of the Facebook user.