Consumers' Attributions Of Corporate Social Irresponsibility And Its Impact On Consumers' Response Inclination

Frequent incidents of corporate social irresponsibility events have attracted extensive attention from the society.Researchers have also paid increasing attention to corporate social irresponsibility research.People tend to form inferences and make responsibility judgments for the corporate social irresponsibility.Prior corporate social irresponsibility research has paid more attention to the driving factors from the corporate level,while research on responsibility judgment is relatively limited.In practice,there is one certain type of corporate social irresponsibility(referred to as“consumer-influenced corporate social irresponsibility” in this dissertation),which is directly or indirectly related to consumers' bad needs or demands,consumption habits,and consumers' participation.Researchers have paid little attention to its attributions,leading to the neglect of the potential influences of corporate culpability and consumer culpability in consumers' attributions of corporate social irresponsibility.As an emerging concept,consumer culpability refers to consumers' acknowledgement that they themselves partially contribute to certain corporate social irresponsibility types.However,research on its manifestations,outcomes,mechanisms and functional conditions has been insufficient.Hence,this dissertation considers consumers' attributions of corporate social irresponsibility,focusing on the attributions of consumer-influenced corporate social irresponsibility.It developed a theoretical model dealing with the relationship between consumers' attributions of corporate social irresponsibility and consumers' response inclination from the perspective of individual consumer by considering corporate culpability and consumer culpability.It investigated the impact of corporate culpability and consumer culpability in consumers' attributions of corporate social irresponsibility(in the following content of this dissertation,“consumers' attributions of corporate social irresponsibility” is shorted for “CSI attributions”)on consumers' inclination to punish and compensate,as well as the underlying mechanisms and functional conditions.This dissertation adopted a mixed-methods approach(including interviews,experiments,and a survey)to answer the research questions via four logically relevant studies.Firstly,an exploratory study was conducted to understand consumers' understanding for the driving factors of corporate social irresponsibility and the manifestations of consumer culpability by using the interviews.Secondly,two pre-tests were conducted to select the corporate social irresponsibility context for the research design of the follow-up studies,and to create the priming material of CSI attributions.Then,study 1 tested the main effect of CSI attributions on consumers' response inclination by using an experiment.Thirdly,study 2 replicated the effect of CSI attributions on consumers' response inclination and examined the mediating role of anger and guilt by using an experiment.Finally,study 3 measured the constructs in the conceptual model and examined the moderating role of moral identity.Based on the existing literature,this dissertation had refined the manifestations of consumer culpability in CSI attributions and found that consumer could recognize the consumer culpability from the consumer-influenced corporate social irresponsibility.The empirical findings showed that corporate culpability in CSI attributions had significantly positive effect on consumers' inclination to punish.Consumer culpability in CSI attributions had significantly positive effect on consumers' inclination to compensate.Anger significantly mediated the effect of corporate culpability on consumers' inclination to punish.Guilt significantly mediatedthe effect of consumer culpability on consumers' inclination to compensate.The higher the moral identity,the stronger the mediating role of anger in the influence of corporate culpability on consumers' inclination to punish.When participants indicated higher level of moral identity,the mediating role of guilt in the influence of consumer culpability on consumers' inclination to compensate was significant.This dissertation studied the attributions of consumer-influenced corporate social irresponsibility from the aspects of corporate culpability and consumer culpability in CSI attributions and improved the manifestations of consumer culpability concept.Hence,it was helpful to enrich the corporate social irresponsibility attributions literature.When studied the impact of corporate culpability in CSI attributions on consumers' inclination to punish,this work developed and examined the impact of consumer culpability on consumers' inclination to compensate and its mechanisms and functional conditions,which had enriched the literature on the relationship between corporate social irresponsibility and consumer responses.Meanwhile,the findings can help corporates to understand the outcomes of corporate culpability and consumer culpability in CSI attributions and to remind the corporates paying attention to consumers' emotional and behavioral responses towards corporate behaviors.In addition,this study can be helpful to provide suggestions to consumers to manage consumer culpability and to reduce the corporate social irresponsibility facilitated by consumption.