Facts Over Stories for Involved Publics: Framing Effects in CSR Messaging and the Roles of Issue Involvement, Message Elaboration, Affect, and Skepticism

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Management Communication Quarterly

Publication Date

2-1-2019

Abstract

© The Author(s) 2018. This project investigated how issue involvement and positive affect are related to attitude and behavioral intention in the context of episodically and thematically framed corporate social responsibility (CSR) messages. We examined mediation effects of message elaboration on issue involvement and affect as well as moderation effects of dispositional skepticism on the relationships between affect, and attitude and behavioral intention. Results from two message-embedded surveys show that for the two types of messages used, issue involvement was positively correlated with positive affect and, consequently, with attitude and behavioral intention. However, for episodically framed messages, route-of-information processing mediated the relationship between issue involvement and affect. Dispositional skepticism moderated the relationship between positive affect and attitude toward the organization for these messages but did not affect behavioral intention. Overall, the findings suggest that prioritizing fact-based messaging over story-based messaging for involved publics could improve communication of the impact of CSR programs.

ISSN

0893-3189

Publisher

SAGE Publications Inc.

Volume

33

Issue

1

First Page

7

Last Page

38

Disciplines

Business | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Keywords

affect, CSR communication, dispositional skepticism, ELM, episodic frames, information processing, issue involvement, thematic frames

Scopus ID

85053383912

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

yes

Open Access Type

Bronze: This publication is openly available on the publisher’s website but without an open license

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