The effect of corporate social responsibility on consumers' attitude toward waste treatment facilities

The paper analyzes the role of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a tool for firms toadopt social initiatives and increase their reputation amongst customers. Despite a growingeffort in investigating corporate environmental strategies and CSR effects on consumers’attitudes, extant research does not provide sufficient knowledge of the relationship betweenconsumers’ attitude towards CSR activities and their strictly related behavior. Bby employingAttribution Theory, we developed a conceptual framework and conducted two separateexperiments showing the impact of firms’ CSR initiatives on consumers’ attitudes, behavior,and purchase intentions. Our first experiment shows that company evaluation improves whenCSR activities is considered to be rooted on sincere motives. Conversely, CSR initiativesbackfires on the proponent when consumers perceive that the company motives are drivenby internal and profit reasons. Additionally, our second experiment shows that consumers’attitudes are significantly related to the overall behavioral intentions toward the firm; positive(negative) attitudes toward CSR activities result in positive (negative) consumers’ behavioralintentions toward the firm. Moreover, when we set firm’s reputation as a moderator of therelationship between attitudes and behaviors, we found that it moderates consumer’sattitudes toward the firm’s social initiative and, consequently, consumers’ behavioralintentions.