Effects of Message Appeal when Communicating CSR Initiatives
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be defined as those business activities which take into account the public consequences of company decisions over and above the simple compliance with government regulations (Menguc and Ozanne, 2005; Sharma, 2000) Thus, the management of a company should go beyond the economic concerns, considering both the social and environmental issues as relevant (Clarkson, 1991) Previous research highlights the importance of CSR for firms' stakeholders, yet researchers find low consumer awareness of socially responsible initiatives (Beckmann, 2007; Du et al. 2007; Pomering and Dolnicar, 2009) How to communicate socially responsible initiatives is an important issue both for researchers and managers who invest resources in CSR campaigns.