Environmental CSR communication in the Hotel Industry The Effect of Environmental CSR Communication on Consumer Attitudes

Abstract

An ever-increasing number of companies are including commitment to environmentally responsible values in their corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies. The current research (experiment 1 N = 85; experiment 2 N = 184) contributes to the current CSR literature by increasing the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of environmental CSR, on an individual consumer level. Experiment 1 (part I) examined the relationship between consumers perceived environmental CSR and affective commitment. Experiment 1 (part II) and experiment 2 examined the effect of consumers increased awareness of a hotel company’s environmental CSR activities on the consumer attitudes perceived organisational morality, perceived organisational competence, consumer intention, and perceived corporate greenwashing. Furthermore, the moderating effect of perceived environmental CSR, affective commitment, personal environmentally friendly behaviour and the relevance of COVID-19 was investigated. Study limitations, as well as future research directions are discussed.