A Comparative Study On Corporate Image Building In CSR Reports Of Insurance And Banking Industry From The Perspective Of Attitude System

With the rapid development of global economy,financial industry becomes more active and receives growing public attention.Within this industry,banking and insurance have a huge impact on economic development and people’s lives,and they often need to interact with people.Therefore,to establish a good corporate image among the public is particularly important for them.Through the analysis of Attitude system,this study discusses the similarities and differences between the use of Attitude resources in banking and insurance industry and how they establish good corporate identities.This study selects Anglo-American insurance and banking companies,seven of each,from Fortune 500 in 2016,and takes their leaders’ speeches in the corporate social responsibility(CSR)reports as the research object.Based on the Attitude system of Appraisal Theory,this study conducts a detailed comparative analysis of its three subcategories(Affect,Judgement,and Appreciation)and their sub-types between the two industries.UAM Tool and AntConc are employed in the study.UAM Tool is used to annotate and generate the statistical results of Attitude resources,while Ant Conc is used to index tagged words and sentences.Results show that both banking and insurance industry use the Appreciation resources most often,while they seldom use Affect resources in their CSR reports.Among them,the banking industry uses Affect and Appreciation resources relatively frequently,especially the Inclination resources of Affect,while the insurance industry uses far more Judgment resources.In addition,the sub-types of Attitude system in these two industries are quite different and have different emphasis.The study finds that the two industries establish very different identities in their CSR reports.The insurance industry establishes a caring,trustworthy and capable corporate image,while the banking industry establishes a hopeful,progressive and confident corporate image.However,they both believe that they have greatinfluence,and highly value the corporate social responsibility so a strong and responsible corporate image is built.As an application of Appraisal Theory,this study further validates the feasibility and importance of it in corporate social responsibility reports.It also shows how different industries strategically construct corporate image by using Attitude resources,which provides a certain reference value for CSR reporting and corporate image constructing.