Processing of CSR communication: Insights from the ELM  

Oleh:

Bögel, Paula Maria

Jenis: Article from Proceeding
Dalam koleksi: The 2nd International CSR Communication Conference Aarhus, 18-20 September 2013), page 1-3.
Topik: CSR communication; Elaboration likelihood model; Involvement; Social responsibility
Fulltext: Processing of CSR communication Insights from the ELM.pdf (66.74KB)

Isi artikel

Over the last decades, a constantly increasing number of companies have engaged in corporate social responsibility (CSR ) activities, often with the aim to gain a competitive advantage (Carroll and Shabana, 2010). Effective CSR communication is one basic condition for companies to profit from their CSR activities (Ihlen et al., 2011). However, despite the importance of CSR communication for a successful CSR engagement, management often does not include it in strategic planning. As a result, existing studies identify two major problems in CSR communication: the lack of awareness about CSR activities among many stakeholders and stakeholders’ skepticism towards CSR (Du et al., 2010). Key stakeholders often do not trust companies’ CSR activities; actually, they frequently accuse companies of engaging in such activities only for marketing purposes, so called “greenwashing”. Hence, a key challenge for companies is to persuade stakeholders to believe in their CSR engagement and consequently overcome the trust barrier. Therefore, it is necessary to better understand how stakeholders process CSR communication and how they evaluate it. So far, little is known about the cognitive processes that influence the processing of CSR information and the variables involved (Wang and Anderson, 2011). One variable that has been identified in numerous studies as a significant influencing factor of information processing is involvement (Gotlieb and Sarel, 1991; Petty et al., 2009). Based on these previous findings, the purpose of this research is to better understand how stakeholders process information about CSR and how they can be persuaded by CSR communication depending on their CSR involvement. This quantitative study examines if stakeholders with high vs. low corporate social responsibility (CSR ) involvement differ in their processing of CSR communication as well as in their expectations for persuasive CSR communication. Implications for target-based CSR communication are also discussed.

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