The effect of corporate social responsibility on customer donations to corporate-supported nonprofits

Both theory and recent research evidence suggest that a corporation's socially responsible behavior can positively affect consumers' attitudes toward the corporation. The effect occurs both directly and indirectly through the behavior's effect on customer-corporation identification. The authors report the results of four studies designed to replicate and extend these findings. Using a field survey design, Study 1 provides evidence that perceived corporate social responsibility affects not only customer purchase behavior through customer-corporate identification but also customer donations to corporate-supported nonprofit organizations. Using experimental designs, Studies 2 and 3 replicate and extend the Study 1 findings by providing additional evidence for the mediating role of customer-corporate identification on the relationship between corporate social responsibility and customer donations. However, the combined results of Studies 2 and 3 also show that because of a "perceived opportunity to do good" by supporting a company that is changing its ways, consumers are more likely to donate to a corporate-supported nonprofit when the corporation has a weaker historical record of socially responsible behavior. Finally, Study 4 tests the relationship between the nonprofit domain and the domain of the corporation's socially responsible behavior as a boundary condition for this effect.