Consumers’ prosocial engagement in CSR : why should they care and what does it mean to them?

Purpose: Public relations practitioners worldwide are attempting to enhance the overall organization–stakeholder relationships by applying strategic communication techniques and skills to corporate social responsibility (CSR) management and communications. In this light, drawing on the prosocial motivation literature, this paper aims to investigate consumers’ implicit and explicit motivations for prosocial behavior, and how these two motivations interact to affect consumers’ willingness to contribute to CSR activities. Second, through the lens of sensemaking theory, this study evaluates the influence of successful prosocial behavior engagement on consumers’ perceptions of both self and companies’ prosocial identities, CSR authenticity and company evaluations. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopts a dictator game experiment with 2 × 2 factorial design to gauge consumers’ prosocial behavioral response toward companies’ CSR communication with implicit and explicit motivations and to examine its effect on company evaluation. Findings: In all, the results of this study suggest that implicit motivation, i.e. self-affirmation intervention, in CSR communication will cause consumers to donate more money to CSR programs; whereas explicit motivation does not exert an effect on consumers’ prosocial behavior. In addition, such donation will trigger consumers’ prosocial sensemaking process and lead to strong identification with the company, positive attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the company. Originality/value: This study aims to build a consumer- and social cause-oriented CSR communication model, which maximizes the impact of CSR investments on consumer relationship building, business bottom line and social causes.