The Effect Of Ambient Temperature On Consumers’ Attribution Of Corporate Social Responsibility

With the development of the social economy, companies and the public become more and more sensitized to the social responsibility. More and more companies begin to fulfill their social responsibility and contribute to the society. Corresponding with it, research about corporate social responsibility and consumers’responses become more and more common.However, most of these researches are conducted in corporate level, industrial level and consumer level, the ambient environment and the specific context factors are always ignored.Therefore, in the present paper, we analyze the effect of ambient temperature on consumers’attribution of companies’social behavior based on the theory of sensory marketing and feeling-as-information. Three laboratory experiments suggest that comfortable ambient temperatures can influence consumers’attribution of corporate social responsibility information. Specifically, study 1 show that warm (vs. cool) temperatures dispose consumers toward attributing companies’acts of social responsibility to altruism. Study 2 shows that warm temperatures increased the participants’trust in companies and this enhanced trust, in turn, rendered them more likely to attribute companies’acts of social responsibility to altruism. Study 3 shows that the perceived informational value moderates the effect of ambient temperatures on the attribution of corporate social responsibility. When the ambient temperatures are made salient, people discount the informational value of temperatures and correct for the influence of ambient temperatures on their attribution of corporate social responsibility information. That is, the effect of ambient temperatures on the attribution of corporate social responsibility will be attenuated.