Research On The Impact Of Corporate Social Responsibility Communication On Consumer Engagement

Corporate social responsibility means that while creating profits and taking legal responsibilities to shareholders and employees,companies also undertake social responsibilities to consumers,communities,and the environment.Therefore,corporate social responsibility communication refers to the process by which a company communicates its efforts or results in undertaking social responsibility to stakeholders.Social media is regarded as the best channel for corporate social responsibility communication.Consumers’ active engagement in corporate social responsibility communication on social media(hereinafter referred to as consumer engagement)can promote the diffusion of corporate social responsibility information,improve its credibility,and then enhance corporate image,reputation and performance.Therefore,promoting consumers to engage in corporate social responsibility communication on social media is of great significance to the development of enterprises,and it is also an important challenge for corporate social responsibility communication.The current research mainly focuses on large-scale social media in the West,focusing on the analysis of the impact of communication strategies,topics,and tone on consumer engagement,ignoring the impact of communication content.Therefore,it is necessary to explore the impact of differences in corporate social responsibility communication content on consumer engagement based on domestic social media platforms,which has important theoretical significance and practical value for Chinese companies to promote consumer engagement in corporate social responsibility communication and enhance corporate image.First,a framework of the impact of corporate social responsibility communication on consumer engagement is constructed from a theoretical level.The impact of corporate social responsibility communication on consumer engagement is related to the level of detail with which companies communicate social responsibility messages.In addition,consumers’ motivational attribution and skepticism towards corporate social responsibility are the two major factors that affect consumer engagement.Therefore,this research constructs a theoretical framework of the impact of corporate social responsibility communication on consumer engagement from the perspective of communication content,including three aspects: the detailed presentation of corporate social responsibility communication content,the presentation of motivation,and the presentation of consumer expectations.Second,based on the framework theory,it reveals the impact of corporate social responsibility communication on consumer engagement.Based on 23,658 Weibo tweets from 14 food and beverage companies,the research results were obtained through hand-coded classification — machine learning training classification — econometric analysis.The results show that consumers are more engaged with corporate social responsibility-related tweets relative to non-corporate social responsibility tweets;Consumers are more engaged with tweets that employ specific corporate social responsibility information strategies than tweets that employ abstract corporate social responsibility information strategies;Compared with plain-text corporate social responsibility tweets,consumers are more engaged in corporate social responsibility tweets featuring modality interaction and information interaction.Third,based on attribution theory,the influence of corporate social responsibility communication motivation presentation on consumer engagement is analyzed.The research hypotheses were tested with 432 pieces of data obtained through the questionnaire method.The results show that normative corporate social responsibility communication motivation can have a positive impact on consumer engagement both directly and indirectly through substantive corporate social responsibility motivation attribution;In addition,strategic corporate social responsibility communication motivation can negatively affect consumer engagement both directly and indirectly through symbolic corporate social responsibility motivation attribution.Then,based on the elaboration likelihood model,we explored the impact of corporate social responsibility communication expectations on consumer engagement.The data was obtained through the questionnaire survey method,and the influence of informativeness,transparency,consistency,personal relevance,third-party endorsement,and frequency of corporate social responsibility communication on consumer engagement was examined.The results show that corporate social responsibility informativeness,transparency,and consistency affect consumer engagement through cognitive trust,and the credibility of information sources is an important boundary condition;Personal relevance,third-party endorsement,and frequency affect consumer engagement through emotional trust,and the similarity between consumers and enterprises is an important boundary condition.Finally,the theoretical contributions of this paper are discussed based on the research findings,corresponding management implications are proposed,and the research limitations and future research prospects of this paper are expounded.