Tainted gift?: harmful effects of a bad profit company's corporate social responsibility activity on the associated good nonprofit organization's future

Abstract

Using structural equation modeling, this study tested the effectiveness of two communication factors (the source affiliation type and the level of Corporate Social Responsibility value) on people's source trustworthiness, personal relevance to the message, message elaboration, suspicion toward the pure motive of profit and nonprofit organization, their attitude, and behavior intention toward the profit and nonprofit organization. Testing the situation that one bad oil profit company associates with a good environment-related nonprofit organization by sponsoring an environment-related social event, the results showed that the bad profit company got expected benefits from the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) association and CSR communication activity in terms of positive attitude and purchase intention of the profit company's products whereas the associated nonprofit organization got unexpected losses in terms of people's attitude and donation intention toward the nonprofit organization. This result shows the possibility of the harmful transfer effect from people's heightened suspicion toward the profit company to the good nonprofit organization.