Perceived Platform CSR And Customer Loyalty:Empirical Study On The Mediationg Effects Of Consumer Engagement And Moderating Effects Of CSR Attributions

Technological innovation brought about rapid and continuous development of mankind.Particularly,the emergence and wide application of Internet Technology promotes the boom of the platform economy,making its status in social economy rising.Yet,innovation comes together with damage.The development of platform economy triggers new platform social responsibility issues such as drivers with issues,click farming,etc.,causing negative impact on society.The emergence of these irresponsible issues are closely related with the platform enterprises.Platform enterprises are the core center of platform-based business ecosystem,and undertake not only traditional corporate social responsibility,but also quasi-governmental responsibility for bilateral users through its management,being an important factor to consider for customers when choose service platforms.Platform enterprises can improve their corporate image,enhance their platform competitiveness and create social value increment by performing their corporate social responsibility.The theory building of platform CSR has not yet been completed,the current literature mainly discuss legitimacy,definition,content and boundaries of platform CSR,leaving empirical research on platform CSR from the perspective of stakeholders(i.e.consumers)a void.Therefore,this research is focused on the impact of platform CSR perception on customer loyalty and answers question regarding definition and dimension of platform CSR and the mechanism underlying the relationship between consumers'platform CSR perception and their loyalty.It attempts to introduce customer engagement as the mediator and CSR attribution as the moderator in the model.From the perspective of behavior,the research contributes to research on platform CSR,being of significance both theoretically and practically to formation of platform CSR and customer loyalty.This study constructs the concept and dimension model of platform CSR through qualitative research,and conducts empirical test.Guided by "S-O-R" model,in light of social exchange theory,signal theory,attribution theory and self-determination theory,this paper builds a conceptual model of the impact of platform CSR on customer loyalty,and proposes hypotheses accordingly.Taking Internet platform consumers as the sample,this paper gains data based on questionnaire survey,then analyzes and tests the model,being the empirical research on the impact of platform CSR on customer loyalty.The following conclusions are drawn.On the one hand,through exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis,the paper finds that platform CSR consists of two dimensions:platform CSR as independent operators and platform CSR as platform operators.Specifically,platform CSR as independent operators includes dimensions of legal responsibility,platform quality responsibility and high-level function,and platform CSR as platform operators includes dimensions of access reviewing responsibility,user-behavior responsibility and ecosystem responsibility.On the other hand,testing the chain relationship of perceived platform CSR,customer engagement and customer loyalty,this paper reveals the mechanism underlying the impact of platform CSR on customer loyalty.Specifically,this study verifies that:(1)platform CSR perception as independent operators and platform operators both have significant positive impact on customer loyalty,and different dimension of platform CSR has varying degrees of impact on customer loyalty;(2)customer engagement mediates positive impact of platform CSR perception on customer loyalty,and the mediating effect of emotional and rational customer engagement is varying regarding the impact of platform quality responsibility perception,high-level function responsibility perception,user-behavior responsibility perception and ecosystem responsibility perception on customer loyalty;(3)altruistic attribution regarding CSR positively moderates the relationship between platform CSR perception and customer loyalty and egoistic attribution regarding CSR has no moderating effect.To conclude,the research has following three main innovations:(1)innovation on the key construct of platform CSR.The development of CSR theory is a sequential process with different connotations and dimensions in different situations.The research explores CSR under the context of platform economy,builds and verifies the conceptual model of platform CSR considering the particularity of platform enterprise,and finally concludes that the platform CSR is structured under two categories of independent-operating platform CSR(including dimensions of legal responsibility,platform quality responsibility,high-level function)and business-operating platform CSR(including dimensions of access reviewing responsibility,user-behavior responsibility and ecosystem responsibility).Meanwhile,the scale measuring six dimensions of platform CSR is established,laying foundations for following empirical study.(2)taking the perspective of platform consumers,the research builds model of the impact of perceived platform CSR on customer loyalty,so as to push the research of CSR to a more critical and specific customer-centered field.Furthermore,by adding the variable of CSR attribution,it broadens the framework of consumer attributions towards CSR and expands the theoretical boundary of stability attribution.(3)On the basis of relevant theories,introducing the psychological state variable of customer engagement to test the relationship among variables.based on empirical research method,The results uncover the black box of the relationship between perceived platform CSR and customer loyalty,and as a result advances the platform CSR research from theoretical level to empirical level.