Abstract:

The proposition of strategic corporate social responsibility emphasized long-term orientation in managing CSR activities. As the focal point of both academic researches and business practices, the theme strategy of CSR aroused wide attention. However, extant studies concentrated more on the selection of the theme of CSR activities, such as the fitness between CSR activities and the core business, thus largely neglecting the consistency of the theme. Whether the enterprise should adopt a consistent theme strategy or should participate in different social programs and how do customers response to different theme consistent strategy are still lacks of researches. Therefore, in this paper, through two progressive experiments, the significant influences of theme consistency on consumer CSR association was demonstrated and consumer’s perceived motivation of CSR was found to play part of mediation role. Moreover, the moderation effect of the communication channel of CSR information was found to be important to strength the influence of the theme consistent strategy.

Key words: corporate social responsibility, theme consistency, cue consistency theory, elaboration likelihood Model, CSR communication