Abstract

While practice and research show that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) communication on social media can have positive effects on corporate reputation, brand attitude and purchase intention, consumer engagement with CSR posts has been underwhelming. Companies are not successfully tapping into the inherent potential of social media communication. This theoretical review integrates extant CSR and social media communication research to contribute to a better understanding of the processes involved in CSR effectiveness on social media. We develop a theoretical model of CSR social media communication, that takes into account its specific characteristics—sensitivity to peer influences through norm activation, interactivity, viral CSR message propagation through sharing, CSR empowerment, and humane-oriented appeals in CSR posts. The hypothesized framework connects CSR and social media-specific drivers with two social media CSR communication outcomes: i) CSR effectiveness in terms of CSR associations, corporate/brand attitude and purchase behavior, and ii) social media performance indicators related to propagation on the network—social media endorsement and opposition (liking, positive and negative commenting, and sharing of the CSR post). The model explains the resulting relationships through mediation processes based on CSR credibility and motive attribution, psychological consumer empowerment, moral emotions, as well as social identity and norm activation. Self-construal and community identification are identified as consumer-based contingency factors of these effects. The review framework provides an extended process-oriented agenda for future studies. The paper recommends multi-brand experimental field studies in a real-life social media setting and highlights the requirement of industry collaboration. The expected findings will help companies to choose relevant CSR initiatives, design effective CSR posts, boost viral propagation on the network, and counter and avoid social media opposition through negative feedback.

摘要

虽然实践和研究表明，社交媒体上的企业社会责任 (CSR) 传播可以对企业声誉、品牌态度和购买意愿产生积极影响，但消费者对 CSR 帖子的参与度一直不高。公司没有成功挖掘社交媒体传播的内在潜力。这篇理论评论整合了现有的 CSR 和社交媒体传播研究，有助于更好地理解社交媒体上 CSR 有效性所涉及的过程。我们开发了一个 CSR 社交媒体传播的理论模型，该模型考虑了其特定特征——通过规范激活对同伴影响的敏感性、交互性、通过共享传播 CSR 信息的病毒式传播、CSR 赋权以及 CSR 帖子中的人性化诉求。假设的框架将 CSR 和社交媒体特定驱动因素与两个社交媒体 CSR 传播结果联系起来：i) CSR 关联、企业/品牌态度和购买行为方面的 CSR 有效性，以及 ii) 与网络传播相关的社交媒体绩效指标——社交媒体的支持和反对（点赞、正面和负面评论、分享 CSR 帖子）。该模型通过基于企业社会责任可信度和动机归因、心理消费者赋权、道德情感以及社会认同和规范激活的中介过程来解释由此产生的关系。自我建构和社区认同被确定为这些影响的基于消费者的偶然因素。审查框架为未来的研究提供了一个扩展的面向过程的议程。本文建议在现实社交媒体环境中进行多品牌实验性实地研究，并强调行业协作的要求。预期的调查结果将帮助公司选择相关的 CSR 举措，设计有效的 CSR 帖子，促进网络上的病毒式传播，并通过负面反馈来应对和避免社交媒体的反对。