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Although corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become increasingly important to a company’s success, the relationship between CSR and corporate financial performance is equivocal. The purpose of this research is to explore additional conditions under which CSR can lead to negative outcomes for both the firm and consumers. Specifically, different from other papers examining the negative effects of CSR that focus on either perceived negative motivations or perceived unethical behavior by the firm, this research examines how CSR that is, on the surface, perceived positively by consumers, leads to negative outcomes. The first paper, “Who’s working in the kitchen today”, explores the potential for CSR activities to lead to negative financial outcomes through producer contagion between stigmatized populations and products they produce. The results show that although consumers admire companies that hire stigmatized populations, they actually tend to avoid products produced by stigmatized populations. Consumers believe that this CSR practice decreases the value of products because stigmatized populations may contaminate the products by transferring their negative properties to the products through the production process. Further research identifies the mediating effect of disgust and the moderating effects of product intimacy and end user vulnerability. Finally, a choice task reveals that the negative producer contagion effect can be mitigated by implicit information such as color. The second paper, “Can ‘Real’ Men Consume Ethically?” complements the first paper by examining the outcomes from the consumers’ perspective. This paper examines how observers make judgments about consumers on the basis of their CSR support. Across four experiments it reveals that, in addition to being viewed as socially responsible, consumers are viewed as less masculine and more feminine when they consume ethical products. It also identifies two boundary conditions to this effect, including the use of self-benefit advertising appeals and the use of descriptive norms to signal gender appropriate behavior. It also identifies how consumers resolve the conflict of prosocial and gender-congruent impression management objectives. It shows that when consumers are in the presence of observers of the opposite sex, they are more likely to prioritize prosocial identity even when it threatens their gender orientation.

Two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), especially MoS2 and WS2 recently attract extensive attentions due to their rich physics and great potential applications. Superior to graphene, MS2 (M = Mo/W) monolayers have a native direct energy gap in visible frequency range. This promises great future of MS2 for optoelectronics. To exploit properties and further develop more applications, producing large-scale single crystals of MS2 by a facile method is highly demanded. Here, we report the synthesis of large-scale triangular single crystals of WS2 monolayer from a chemical vapor deposition process and systematic optical studies of such WS2 monolayers. The observations of high yield of light emission and valley-selective circular dichroism experimentally evidence the high optical quality of the WS2 monolayers. This work paves the road to fabricate large-scale single crystalline 2D semiconductors and study their fundamentals. It must be very meaningful for exploiting great potentials of WS2 for future optoelectronics., Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, accepted by Advanced Optical Materials

The electronic structure and structural evolution of hydrogenated graphene are investigated by Raman spectroscopy with multiple excitations. The excitation energy dependent saturation effect on the ratio of integrated intensities of D and G modes (ID/IG) is revealed and further developed as a quick method for estimation of inter-defect distance and defect density in hydrogenated graphene. At low hydrogen coverage, the chemisorbed H atoms behave like defects in sp2 C=C matrix; while for a high hydrogen coverage, the sp3 C-H bonds become coalescent clusters, resulting in confinement effect on the sp2 C domains. Electronic structure changes caused by varying hydrogen coverage are evidenced by excitation energy dependent red shift of D and 2D bands. Our results provide a useful guide for developing applications of hydrogenated graphene, as well as using Raman spectroscopy as quick metrology of the defect density in further exploring other kinds of graphene derivatives., Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

Large scale synthesis of single layer graphene (SLG) by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has received a lot of attention recently. However, CVD synthesis of AB stacked bi-layer graphene (BLG) is still a challenging work. Here we report synthesis of BLG homogeneously in large area by thermal CVD. The 2D Raman band of CVD BLG splits into four components, suggesting splitting of electronic bands due to strong interlayer coupling. The splitting of electronic bands in CVD BLG is further evidenced by the study of near infrared (NIR) absorption and carrier dynamics probed by transient absorption spectroscopy. Ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy invesigation also indiates CVD BLG possesses different electronic structures from those of CVD SLG. The growth mechanism of BLG is found to be related to catalystic activity of copper (Cu)surface, which is determined by purity of Cu foils employed in CVD process. Our work showsthat strongly coupled or even AB stacked BLG can be grown on Cu foils in large scale, which isof particular importance for device applications based on their split electronic bands, Comment: 20 pages, 8 Figures