Corporate social responsibility and behavioral intention: the moderator effect of contextual factors

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the behavioral intention (BI) of customers (e.g. repurchase/revisit intention, spread word of mouth, loyalty, willingness to pay). Design/methodology/approach A quantitative meta-analysis of 37 articles ( n = 34,942) was conducted to determine the effect sizes of the relationship between CSR and BI of the customer. Furthermore, two kinds of contextual factors (environmental context and industry type) have been investigated as potential moderators between CSR and BI. Findings Meta-analysis suggests that the positive relationship between CSR and BI is well-established and has a large effect size ( r = 0.42). Individually, the repurchase/revisit intention was the most affected by CSR ( r = 47) followed by loyalty intention ( r = 0.41) where both word of mouth and willingness-to-pay intentions were less affected by CSR ( r = 0.38, r = 0.37, respectively). Moreover, the result of meta-regression shows that both environmental context and industry type do not moderate the relationship between CSR and BI. Originality/value The originality of this paper comes from presenting a summary of the direction of research on primary relationship between CSR and BI, as no prior meta-analysis on the primary relationship has been conducted till date (to the best of the authors’ knowledge).