Social Desirability and Cynicism: Can We Separate Consumer Emotions from Actions in CSR Surveys?

Many consumer-focused corporate social responsibility (CSR) studies suggest a positive link between the responsibility demonstrated by a company and consumers' intention to favor the company in their purchases. Yet an analogous causal effect between corporate social and financial performances is not evident. This paper conceptualizes how social desirability bias and cynicism contribute to the discrepancy between customers' statements and their actual purchase behavior, and analyzes why intentions stated in surveys do not consistently convert into actions. We propose two variables, Corporate Social Desirability and Corporate Social Cynicism, as mediators between CSR and consumers' stated and actual choices. We further develop a framework based on hybrid choice modelling to estimate the impact of these two variables on responsibility research. The goal is to improve the usability of customer CSR survey results by quantifying and extracting the effects of behavioral patterns that otherwise threaten the validity of such findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]