Communicating corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become increasingly important for the success of organizations (Coombs and Holladay, 2012; McWilliams and Siegel, 2001). Several studies have focused on consumer responses to CSR and found that positive evaluations of CSR initiatives led to greater loyalty to both companies and their brands and to more positive behaviors toward companies (Dhanesh, 2015; Glavas and Godwin, 2013; Sen and Bhattacharya, 2001). Therefore, the effective communication of these CSR initiatives appears to be important (Eberle, et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2013). However, research on how consumers perceive a company’s communication of specific CSR motives in relation to its corporate reputation is scarce (De Vries et al., 2013). The current study aimed to investigate the role that communicating CSR motives plays in someone’s perception of a company. To investigate the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motives in explaining consumer-company identification, scepticism and reputation, we conducted two online consumer survey studies. In Study 1 (N=178), we used a well-known personal care product (PCP). In Study 2 (N=220), in the context of a large worldwide furniture retailer, we tried to replicate the findings of Study 1. In contrast to Study 1, we now added situational scepticism. The results of the current study show that the positive relationship between intrinsic CSR motives and company evaluations were replicated from previous studies. In this relationship consumer-company identification and scepticism play a mediating role. However this role seems to be different for positive versus negative attributions. The negative relationship between extrinsic CSR motives and company evaluations seems to be more ambiguous. Suggestions are made for a more meta-analytical approach to distinct consumers’ perceptions on a company’s CSR motives.

There is much evidence in literature supporting the advantageous benefits resulted from corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives (Luo and Bhattacharya, 2006). Among others, consumers’ favorable reactions (e.g., enhanced produce evaluation, purchase intention, brand attitude and relationship) (Brown and Dacin 1997; Klein and Dawar 2004) were widely documented. Importantly, consumers tend to use their perceptions on a company’s CSR performance to infer the characteristics of relevant persons (e.g., self and other consumers) due to the meaning-transferring mechanism (Currás-Pérez et al., 2009; Yoon et al., 2006). Although literature suggests that people do good things in order to feel themselves in a positive light, there is a lack of explicit discussion on the impact of consumers’ participation in CSR programs on their perceptions of self. This is an important issue for designing effective CSR programs which can enhance consumer feelings as well. To bridge the academic gap, this research is aimed to address this question. As brands can be viewed as extended self and brand associations can be transferred into self-definition, good associations related with CSR practices will enhance consumers’ self-perceptions and self-esteem once they engage in CSR-related consumptions. However, many company-specific factors (e.g., product quality) and individual specific factors (e.g., CSR support and beliefs) will vary consumers’ responses to CSR efforts (Sen and Bhattacharya 2001). Similarly, CSR’s impact on self-perceptions may be moderated by significant factors. One of the most important determinants underlying differential customer response to CSR is consumers’ attribution of corporate motives. Consumers may attribute a company’s motivation for engaging in CSR simply as self-serving (e.g., high profit) or other-serving (e.g., engagement in social causes) (Becker-Olsen et al. 2006; Yoon et al. 2006), or further differentiate self-serving motives into strategic and egoistic ones and other-serving motives into value-driven and stakeholders-driven ones (Ellen et al., 2006). We examine the effect of self-serving motive vs. other-serving motive on the linkage of CSR and consumers’ self-perceptions and self-esteem in this research. Further we predict that the relevance of a CSR program with an individual consumer (i.e., self-CSR relevance) interacts with specific corporate motives in enhancing the CSR’s effect on consumers’ self-perceptions and self-esteem. A pilot study was first conducted to examine how CSR performance influences consumers’ perceptions (as well as consumers’ believes on their reference group’s perceptions) on a company’s typical customers’ image and then their purchase intention. In this study, we let respondents play judgers’ role and ask them about the relation of CSR and others’ image. A paper-and-pencil survey on university students was conducted. Three hundred and twenty one copies of questionnaires are sent out and collected in total. After deleting the incomplete ones, 302 valid data points constitute the final sample. The number of female and male respondents is comparable (Male: 49%) with average age of 21.4 year-old. We tested the hypothesized relations through structure equation modeling following Anderson and Gerbing’s (1988) two-step approach. The measurement model has good convergent and discrimiant validity. The structural model testing results indicate that CSR has significant positive impact on people’s perceptions on the image of a company’s typical customers (r=.227, P<.001) and on beliefs of reference group’s perceptions on the image of a company’s typical customers (r=.234, P<.001), which subsequently enhance purchase intention (r=.607, P<.001; r=.149, P<.01). As such, the hypothesized relations are supported. Although consumers’ perceptions on others rather than self-perceptions and self-esteem are investigated in this study, findings provide preliminary support on the notion that a company’s CSR behaviors will be used as significant information to evaluate relevant persons (here are typical customers). In the main experiment study, we ask subjects play actors’ role and further examine the connection of CSR and self-perceptions. Results indicate a significant interactive effect between corporate motive and self-relevance. High self-relevance enlarges the difference of self-evaluations after participation in self-entered CSR programs vs. participation in other-centered CSR programs. This study explicitly examines the impact of consumer participation in CSR-related program on consumer self-perceptions and self-esteem. The findings deepen our understanding on the impact of corporate CSR initiatives on consumer responses, particularly the impact on consumer self-perceptions. It provides important implications for management to provide more effective CSR programs with consumers’ welfare considered.