The Impact Of Corporate Social Responsibility On Consumers Attribution

Product harm crisises occurred increasingly frequently. Due to the speed of the crisis’s occurrence is more faster, and the scope that the crisises involed is more bread,which have caused widespread concern of the whole society. The crisises have caused some negative even irreversible effects on businesses and consumers. Therefore, the scholars constantly study the response mode to product hamr crisis from different perspectives, the market recovery strategies continue and so on.including consumer crisis psychological reactions and behavioral intentions can not be ignored as an important factor. As the used objects of products or service, the psychological reactions of consumers and their behavioral intentions on the crisises become an important area of research. After product harm crisis, consumers will naturally judge who should be responsible for the crisis, namely the process of consumer attribution of the crisis. What factors influence the attributions and what results the attribution will produce have become an important direction. Some scholars have introduced corporate social responsibility into the consumer’s attribution, they found "halo effect" of corporate social responsibility, thatis to say, after the crisis, consumers will make a positive benefit attribution on the coperates which have a positive commitment to corporate social responsibility, thereby reduce the blame to the enterprise. However, the mechanism that how corporate social responsibility affects consumers’attribution of responsibility has not been discussed. Meanwhile, with respect to Western countries, our understanding of corporate social responsibility is not very good. Some companies tend to contributions to fund other socially vulnerable groups and activities those are unrelated to core business, but some other companies will use their own technology, market or other resources to carry out the social responsibility of business-related activities. When companies face the sudden outbreak of the product-harm crisis, which kind of social responsibility activities will allow consumers to make good attribution for the business is a question that is worth exploring. Therefore, from the perspective of corporate social responsibility, examine after product harm crisis, the impact of activities on consumers attribution and its underlying mechanism has an important impaet on practical and theoretical significance.On that basis, this paper introduces the consumer’s perception matching of corporate social responsibility, uses analysis of variance, correlation analysis and builds structural equation modeling approach to research the impact mechanism of corporate social responsibility on consumer’s attribution after the product crisises. Specifically, in the background of the current crises, this paper select a sample of university students, through situational questionnaires investigation, study the impact of fit on perceived motivation, corperation associations, attribution and blame. Through a questionnaire survey data analysis, the results show that:(1) Fit has an significant and positive impact of corperate abilities association and corporate social responsibility association, and the motives of corporate social responsibility also have a positive effection on corporate social responsibility association. Perceived motivation and fit have significant and negative impact on the consumer’s attribution of locaiton, stability and controllability. The attributed consumer’s attribution has a positive and significant impact on consumers’ blame attitude.(2) high and low fit can both have significant and positive impact on corporate social responsibility association. High fit has significantly and positively affect on corperate ability association, but the effect of low fit on the corperate ability association is not significant. While in the context of high fit, corperate ability association has significant and negative impact on location and stability, and the effect of corporate social responsibility attribution association is not significant in the three attribution’s dimensions. In the context of low fit, the effect of corperate ability association and corporate social responsibility association are not significant on the three dimensions. In the context of high fit, the two path coefficients of corperate ability association and corporate social responsibility association on location and stability both have difference significances.The possible contributions of this paper as follows:Firstly, based on the "halo effect" theory of corporate social responsibility on consumers’ attribution, taking into account the consumers’ attribution will rely on their possession of the relevant information about the enterprise, introduce innovativly the the two dimensions of corperate association:corperate ability association and corporate social responsibility association as an intermediary variable, study the mechanisms of corporate social responsibility on consumers’ attribution, verify conclusions that the faction of CSR responsibility on attribution which the foreign scholars made. Secondly, taking into account the various ways of corporate social responsibility activities carried out, especially to domestic enterprises, they do not have a clear direction in carrying out social responsibility activities, making the consumer’awareness of social responsibility activities and related judgments have much difference. From the classification of the level of corporate social responsibility activities in accordance with different fit for the first time, this paper research the effects of different types of social responsibility activities on consumers’attribution.