The Influence Of Mental Imagery On Consumers’ Willingness To Participate In The Virtual CSR Co-creation Situation

Virtual corporate social responsibility(CSR)co-creation,as a new type of social responsibility fulfillment model of "Internet + public welfare",incorporates consumers into CSR activities and creates value with enterprises.This model is conducive to promoting consumers’ understanding of corporate social responsibility,thereby enhancing corporate image and brand reputation.Based on self-expansion theory,this research will explore how to increase consumers’ willingness to participate in virtual CSR co-creation through mental imagery.Specifically,this study uses an experimental method to study the mediating role of self-other overlap and the moderating role of group types and social value orientation between mental imagery and consumer participate in virtual CSR co-creation.This study tested the hypothesis through three experiments.Experiment 1 divided into two scenarios with mental imagery and without mental imagery,to test the willingness of consumer participate in CSR co-creation activities.The purpose of Study1 is to study the main effect of mental imagery on consumers participation.Experiment2 is divided into two scenarios,feelings-imagination and objective-imagination,to test self-other overlap and consumer participation.And because social value orientation is a personality trait factor that can be measured,it has also been verified whether social value orientation will interact with mental images and affect consumer participation.Experiment 3 is a 2x2 between-group experiment design of mental imagery(objectiveimagination VS feelings-imagination)× group type(in-group VS out-group)to study the influence of group type and mental imagery on self-other overlap and consumer participation.There are 4 research results.First,when consumers produce mental images in virtual CSR co-creation activities,they will have a higher willingness to participate.Secondly,compared with objective images,feelings images can lead to higher selfother overlap and willingness to participate.Self-other overlap mediates the relationship between mental imagery and consumer participation.Third,mental imagery and social value orientation interact to influence consumer participation.For the pro-socials,stimulating different mental images has no significant difference in consumer participation;for the pro-selfs,stimulating feelings-images will produce higher consumer participation.Finally,the interaction between mental imagery and group type affects consumer participation.When the recipient is in-group,stimulating different psychological images has no significant difference in consumer participation;when the recipient is out-group,stimulating feelings-images will produce higher consumer participation.