Moral Identity and Attributions of Corporate Social Responsibility

Companies increasingly rely on corporate social responsibility to garner goodwill and positive evaluations, yet little is understood about individual differences in consumers' sensitivity to such efforts. Two studies demonstrate that differences in individuals' Moral Identity reliably predict the attributions made about why a firm undertakes CSR efforts, which then predict firm evaluations. American participants' scores on the Internalization dimension of moral identity, representing self-importance of moral behavior, predict their attributions. In contrast, Singaporean participants' Symbolization scores, capturing social value of moral behavior predict those same attributions. This research represents an important step in understanding internal, consumer-specific drivers of CSR effectiveness