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This paper aims to investigate the impact of different types of corporate social responsibility (CSR; i.e. value-creating CSR, promotional CSR and philanthropic CSR) on consumer responses and the moderating role of corporate competence.

The authors tested the hypotheses by using two empirical studies – a survey and an experimental study. The evidence is generated based on generalized linear model repeated-measures ANOVAs for the survey study and two-way factorial ANOVAs for the experimental study.

The findings show that in general, consumers respond to value-creating CSR more favorably than to philanthropic CSR or promotional CSR. In addition, corporate competence moderates consumers’ responses to different types of CSR in such a way that promotional CSR is more likely to have the desired effects when carried out by low-competency rather than by high-competency firms, whereas value-creating CSR is more effective for high-competency firms than for low-competency ones. Philanthropic CSR works equally in both types of firms.

This research answers a long-term call to study the differential consumer effects of various CSR types. It also identifies perceived corporate competence, an important consumer-based corporate factor, as a potential moderator of consumers’ response to CSR types.

Armed with the findings, companies can choose CSR practices that fit with their company characteristics. This research offers important and specific managerial implications to firms with different company profiles on their CSR choices.

Given that today’s managers are faced with the challenge of selecting desirable CSR activities from a group of options, the authors answered the call by studying the differential effects of a wide array of CSR choices and provide important practical guidance to managers. For the first time in the literature, the study also investigates the potential interactive effects between specific CSR types and corporate competence on consumer reactions. This inquiry bears significant relevance to the ongoing discussions concerning whether and how company characteristics generate influences on the outcomes of CSR strategies.

This study uses second-order measurement invariance analysis to investigate the perspective of gender divide on whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) can serve as a promotional tool for halal certified companies in Malaysia. Perhaps researching into the perspective of gender on whether CSR can serve as a promotional tool has either been ignored or received limited attention among the researchers from this domain. Hence, this study aims to fill this gap.

In the quest to achieve the mentioned aim, quantitative research design was adopted for this study and the developed questionnaire was used to collect data from 295 respondents, consisting of 172 males and 123 females. In analysing the data, this study has mainly used second-order measurement invariance analysis to uncover the difference across gender divide on whether CSR can serve as a promotional tool for halal certified companies.

The findings of this study reveal two perspectives to the issue of interest in this study. The tests of measurement invariance at the model level suggest a significant difference between male and female to a certain extent. The post hoc test (at the path level) reveals that there are significant differences between gender divide with respect to responsible dealings with clients and legal responsibility only. However, there are insignificant differences between them in connection with commitment to halal best practices, zakat and charitable donations, environmental responsibility, halal economic responsibility and employee welfare. Nonetheless, both gender groups agree that CSR activities will promote halal certified companies if these activities are appropriately communicated to halal consumers.

The authors acknowledge that limitations cannot be avoided in any study, such as this study, where a nonprobability sampling technique is used. The respondents were largely drawn from Klang Valley in Malaysia; although Klang Valley’s population represents about a quarter of Malaysia’s total population, the authors admit that the opinions of the respondents may not represent the opinions of others in the country, and this may consequently limit the generalisability of the findings. Also, the authors acknowledge that self-report survey data is subject to response bias, which may reduce the accuracy of the data that were sourced from the respondents; though respondents were constantly reminded to respond honestly to all the questions in the questionnaire.

This study has uniquely employed second-order measurement invariance analysis to investigate the perspective of gender divide on whether CSR can serve as a promotional tool for halal certified companies in Malaysia. This study will enrich literature in this area of study.

This research aims to understand consumer responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) during an unprecedented public health crisis. Specifically, two studies were conducted to investigate how companies’ different CSR initiatives in the early stage of COVID-19 would influence consumers’ advocacy intention according to their focus (i.e. targets of institutional CSR). The first study examined the moderating role of individuals’ CSR expectancy on the effects of companies’ CSR initiatives on consumers’ brand advocacy intention. The second study further extends the findings of Study 1 by examining the mediating role of perceived brand motive.

Two between-subject online experiments were conducted to explore the impact of three types of institutional CSR initiatives (i.e. community, employee and consumer-centered CSRs) on brand advocacy. Study 1 (N = 380) examined the moderating role of CSR expectancy in influencing consumer responses to institutional CSR initiatives. Study 2 (N = 384) explored the underlying mechanism through examining the mediating role of a company’s value-driven motivation in the process.

Study 1 indicated that institutional CSR, regardless of type, was more effective in generating a more significant brand advocacy intention than a promotional message, measured as a baseline. The impact of different kinds of institutional CSR on consumers’ brand advocacy intentions was significantly moderated by their CSR-related expectations. Specifically, individuals with moderate to high CSR expectancy showed higher brand advocacy intentions in both consumer- and employee-centered CSR initiatives than the promotional message. In comparison, those with low CSR expectancy only showed higher brand advocacy intentions in the community-centered CSR initiative. In addition, as individuals’ CSR expectations rose, the mediation effect of the perceived value-driven motivation became stronger.

The current study includes guiding principles to help companies effectively respond to COVID-19 as corporate citizens by demonstrating the importance of individuals’ CSR expectancy across three CSR initiatives. This study used real-life examples of how leading companies were stepping up CSR efforts and suggested an approach that aligns CSR behaviors with the urgent and fundamental human needs of COVID-19.

In line with the CSR goal of maximizing benefits for stakeholders, this study’s findings signal that situational changes determine CSR expectations and that companies must be highly susceptible to the changes in consumers’ expectations of CSR and their appraisal process of CSR motives to maximize its CSR value.

Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model, this study aims to examine how employee volunteer program (EVP) type, corporate visual identity, and issue involvement affect external publics' attributions of EVPs and attitudes toward the company.

A 2 (EVP type: skills-based vs. not-skills-based) × 2 (salience of corporate visual identity: high vs. low) randomized experiment was conducted with 157 participants from Amazon's Mechanical Turk. A fictitious company and its EVP messages were created to control for the company's existing reputation and participants' past experiences with the company.

Participants responded positively toward EVP messages regardless of the EVP type. However, salient corporate visual identity significantly aroused participants' more attributed firm-serving motives, which led to more negative attitudes toward the company. Next, issue involvement presented its value in EVP communication as highly involved participants displayed favorable attributions of EVPs and positive attitudes toward the company.

This study approaches EVPs as an important CSR practice and expands the discussion on strategic CSR communication by uncovering the roles of central and peripheral cues in public responses to EVP messages. Moreover, the findings highlight the importance of fostering and enhancing publics' issue involvement in achieving successful EVP communication.

This paper aims to investigate whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts that are oriented toward shared value creation generate any perceptual advantages in terms of consumer product attributes evaluations compared with other types of CSR. The study also uncovers consumers’ pathways that channel the impacts of corporate associations on corporate and product evaluations and purchase intention.

This study uses a between-subjects experimental design. In all, 274 undergraduate students from a North American university participated in the 2 (low versus high corporate ability levels) × 4 (CSR types) study. The data were analyzed using the methodologies of path analysis and multiple group analysis in the context of structural equation modeling procedure.

The findings show that in the context of shared-value CSR, CSR image (i.e. consumer judgments on the moral aspect of the company) can spill over to product attributes evaluations, including perceptions of “product innovativeness” and “product social responsibility,” which, in turn, translate to purchase willingness. Meanwhile, perceived corporate trustworthiness mediates the effects of CSR image and corporate ability (CA) image on the overall corporate evaluation, which subsequently influences consumer product evaluation and purchase intention.

The research provides direct evidence showing that companies have the potential to improve their corporate brand and, in turn, their product evaluations by putting a stronger emphasis on the social responsibility components of their image and placing this at the core of their strategic agenda. Importantly, a contribution to the literature by identifying differential effects of CA image versus CSR image on consumer perception of product innovativeness within different CSR categories is made. The limitations of the research are discussed, which include the usage of a fictitious company and brand and a convenience sample.

The study offers guidance to managers in regard to their choice of different CSR practices to fulfill their company’s product-related strategic goals.

The present study takes a critical stance to show that previous experimental work investigating the impact of CSR image on product evaluations relied predominantly on bipolar manipulations of CSR practices (bad versus good) rather than bringing many shades of CSR into consideration. By incorporating a wide array of CSR formats, especially value-creating CSR, current research generates potential implications based on differential effects of various CSR focuses, which have not been captured by previous studies.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication covered by the news media is considered as more credible and effective in shaping public perceptions toward corporations than CSR shared by corporations themselves. This is particularly true when CSR is about corporations with social stigma inherent in business practices. This study examines the CSR publicity of stigmatized industries from the journalism lens.

A content analysis was conducted with CSR stories from 2019 to 2020 by USA newspapers (n = 348).

Results of this study showed that the overall volume of CSR from stigmatized industries has decreased, with fewer responses to the recent pandemic. Further, the media brought promotional CSR activities and the business motives behind the activities into focus. Opposing patterns were found for CSR of non-stigmatized industries presented with philanthropic activities based on corporations' social motives to help communities. Similarly, economic and legal responsibilities reflected in the CSR pyramid were more prominently reported for stigmatized industries, and ethical and discretionary responsibilities appeared more frequently for non-stigmatized industries.

Integrating business and media literature, this study enriches scholarly discussions on media processes and effects for CSR communication. This study also provides practical implications for stigmatized industries by highlighting more authentic and careful approaches for CSR communication to earn positive publicity.

This study provides social implications by highlighting the importance of CSR communications through the lens of news media when corporations are socially stigmatized.

Stigmatized industries are known to be active in CSR communication to nullify social stigma surrounding themselves. The authors' findings provide empirical evidence suggesting that not all publicity benefits CSR communication for stigmatized corporations.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) index represents attributes of firms that are differentiated. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of differentiated CSR, CSRS (strategic CSR activities) and CSRD (defensive CSR activities) on R&D expenditure and its effectiveness on firm values.

The sample includes 1,388 firm-year observations for 2004–2015 of listed firms on the Korean Stock Exchange (KSE) whose CSR measures, KEJI (Korea Economic Justice Institute) index are available from the Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice (2016).

The results show that while CSRS is positively associated with R&D expenditure, CSRD is not. Further, development costs and its interaction term with CSRS positively affect firm values.

This study provides an important reason to separate the attributes of the CSR in future empirical studies. The results imply that the study of effects of CSR on sustainable growth or firm values should focus on CSRS rather than CSR activities in general in future research.

As the focal point of both academic studies and business practices, the theme strategy of corporate social responsibility (CSR) arouses wide attention. However, extant studies concentrate more on the selection of the theme of CSR activities, such as the fitness between CSR activities and the core business, thus largely neglecting the consistency of the theme. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the enterprise should adopt a consistent theme strategy or should participate in different social programs, and how do customers response to the lack of studies in different theme-consistent strategies.

In this paper, two progressive experiments are performed. The purpose of study 1 is to examine the influence of theme consistency on consumers’ CSR association and how consumers’ attribution to corporation motivation mediates such impacts. The purpose for study 2 is to examine whether information dissemination channels and cooperation with public organization could affect the influence of theme consistency strategy.

The significant influences of theme consistency on consumer CSR association was demonstrated, and consumer’s perceived motivation of CSR was found to play the mediation role. Moreover, the moderation effect of the communication channel of CSR information was found to be important to strengthen the influence of the theme-consistent strategy.

This paper not only demonstrates the influence of theme consistency, but also explains how theme consistency influences consumers’ attitude and behavior. It enriches the study on the antecedent variables of consumers’ attribution to corporate motivation.

This paper aims to intend to ascertain whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) can serve as an effective promotional tool for the Malaysian halal certified companies in the era of Covid-19 pandemic. Starting from being nice to do, the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought CSR to the forefront of businesses, forcing them to rapidly shift from profit maximisation to business preservation. Thus, it is practically crucial to ascertain whether CSR could be effectively used to promote halal brands in this era.

To achieve the stated aim, a survey questionnaire was developed and used to collect data from 295 participants who are familiar with the concepts of CSR and halal in Malaysia. The data collected were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics.

The findings reveal that the commitment to halal best practices, zakat and charitable donations, environmental responsibility, employee welfare and responsible dealings with clients are the most important CSR activities that can promote halal certified companies in the era of Covid-19. Whilst there is a positive relationship between halal economic responsibility and CSR as a promotional tool, such relationship is not significant. Nevertheless, the relationship between legal responsibility and CSR as a promotional tool is negative and insignificant.

Limitations are inevitable in any study where a convenient sampling technique is used. Respondents from Klang Valley in Malaysia make up a large proportion of the study’s sample. This may consequently limit the generalisability of the findings of this study. Hence, future research should adequately collect data from other cities in Malaysia. Moreover, this paper does not differentiate between perceptions of Muslims and non-Muslims or between male and female; this might have an effect, as Muslims are likely to favour most of the items in the questionnaire used to collect data for this study. Thus, future research may collect sufficient data to shed more light on this issue.

The researchers have revealed that CSR is an effective promotional tool for the Malaysian halal certified companies in the era of Covid-19 pandemic. Study of this nature is rare in academic literature.

Corporate managers must find a way to communicate their CSR activities to stakeholders without creating a boomerang effect where the CSR messages create resentment of instead of support for the corporation. One alternative is to use social media channels because they are low cost and can use a soft sell approach, thereby reducing the likelihood of a boomerang effect. However, using social media messaging about CSR challenges managers to attract followers to those social media channels. This chapter explores the use of gamification, the use of gaming features in the CSR messaging, to present CSR messages. The case study of Kraft’s “Two-Minute Drill” is used to illustrate how gamification can be used to promote social media-based CSR messaging.

A case study method is used to illuminate how Kraft used gamification to increase the audience for its anti-hunger CSR efforts. Kraft used the “Two-Minute Drill” game to attract people to their effort to fight hunger.

The “2-Minute Trivia Drill” seemed to overcome the CSR promotional communication concerns of tone and cost. The dominant message and theme is feeding the hungry. The tone on the Facebook page and the game itself is subtle in relation to the Kraft brand because Kraft appears in the background through its logo, name, and the names of prominent Kraft products. The stakeholders are treated as the drivers of the CSR effort because the individuals playing the game are what create the donations from Kraft. Donations could even be personalized. None of the comments posted to the Kraft Fight Hunger Facebook page questioned the expense of the project. Overall the comments were very favorable suggesting there was no boomerang effect from the game.

The study offers only one case study of gamification in CSR communication. More cases are necessary to draw stronger conclusions about the utility of gamification for CSR communication presented via social media. Moreover, more direct measures are needed to assess how stakeholders feel about CSR messages using gamifications and if the strategy can consistently prevent a boomerang effect.

The implications from the case study are that gamification can be an effective way to attract stakeholders to social media-based CSR messages and to generate positive reactions to the CSR messaging.

This chapter is one of the first detailed explorations of gamification as a means to avoid the dangers of the CSR promotional communication dilemma (stakeholders wanting CSR information but reacting negatively to the promotion of CSR activities).