The Influence of Corporate Social Responsibility Publicity on Consumers' Willingness to purchase in the Context of Product-harm Crisis

This article exams the relationship between corporate social responsibility publicity and consumers' willingness to purchase. Based on frame effect theory, this article divides CSR publicity into 2 types: concrete and abstract. By a 2 (CSR publicity: concrete VS abstract) x 2 (information source: internal VS external) experiment, the findings show that concrete CSR publicity can increase consumers' willingness to purchase more than abstract one. Consumers' perceived hypocrisy plays a mediating role on the relationship between CSR publicity and consumers' willingness to purchase. In addition, information source may play a regulatory role between the above relationships. If consumers get information about corporate social responsibility activities outside of the enterprise, concrete CSR publicity are more obvious to reduce consumers' perceived hypocrisy. Conversely, if consumers obtain corporate social responsibility information inside of the enterprise, the concrete and abstract CSR publicity have little difference on consumers' perceived hypocrisy.