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

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.