Assessing Prosocial Values in Initial Career Choice: The SVO Slider as a Behavioral Predictor of CSR Attribute Preferences

Individual differences in prosocial values shape how job seekers weigh collective-oriented versus self-oriented job attributes, yet existing career assessment tools rely primarily on self-report measures susceptible to social desirability bias. This study applies Social Value Orientation (SVO), assessed via a behavioral resource-allocation instrument (i.e., the SVO slider measure), as a predictor of how applicants weigh corporate social responsibility (CSR) dimensions relative to salary and location in initial career choice. Using adaptive choice-based conjoint analysis ( N = 425 undergraduates), four CSR dimensions ( employee , environmental , social , and governance ) were examined alongside salary and location. Salary dominated job choice, followed by employee CSR. SVO positively predicted the importance of environmental and social CSR, dimensions primarily benefiting stakeholders outside the organization, while showing no significant association with employee CSR, consistent with the direct personal benefits it confers on employees. SVO negatively predicted salary importance. These findings provide evidence that the motivational structure underlying cooperation in social dilemma contexts also operates in initial career decisions and illustrate that conjoint analysis yields individual-level job attribute importance profiles with implications for career assessment research and employer recruitment.