CSR commitments, perceptions of hypocrisy, and recovery
Highlights the results of two studies covering the impact of a business’ social responsibility initiatives on repute, brand and customer loyalty while cautioning that CSR efforts must be genuine in their motivation or risk consumer backlash.
Abstract
This paper examines perceived hypocrisy when a failure is aligned with prior social performance. It is hypothesized that commitment to a CSR domain creates greater performance expectations thus exacerbating the effects when an aligned failure occurs. Study 1 demonstrates that failure alignment and severity increase perceived hypocrisy which negatively impacts customer evaluations of trust, repurchase intent, and brand attitude. Study 2 evaluates two response strategies of apology and compensation vs. no response. An apology significantly reduced perceptions of hypocrisy only when the failure was unaligned with prior CSR. Compensation significantly reduced hypocrisy in both the unaligned and aligned conditions.
Authors
Smith, D., Rhiney, E. CSR commitments, perceptions of hypocrisy, and recovery. Int J Corporate Soc Responsibility 5, 1 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40991-019-0046-7