公众对旅游企业停止慈善性社会责任的响应研究

How to Have a Good Ending from a Good Beginning:The Mass Consumers Response from the Discontinuation of Charity CSR

旅游企业社会责任研究是一个十分重要的研究领域。目前,关于旅游企业社会责任的相关研究尚停留在如何承担的阶段,关于如何停止社会责任的议题尚处于空白,需要学者们的更多重视。为了弥补该研究空缺,文章对旅游企业停止慈善性社会责任的公众响应进行了研究。该研究使用消费者实验的方法,针对慈善性社会责任,设计3个实验对4个研究假设进行实证检验。研究发现:1)当旅游企业停止承担慈善性社会责任时,会显著降低公众对旅游企业的态度评价;2)相对于利他主义动机,利己主义动机感知会增强停止慈善性社会责任带来的公众态度下降程度;3)相对于被动停止,主动停止的慈善性社会责任会增强公众对旅游企业态度评价的下降程度;4)相对于短时间,停止长时间的慈善性社会责任会增强公众对旅游企业态度的下降程度。最后,为旅游企业提出了针对性的意见和建议。

The issue of corporate social responsibility （CSR） is increasingly emphasized in societies around the world as concerns about the environment grow and environmental legislation expands and strengthens. Industry adoption of CSR policies has, in turn, attracted substantial attention in recent decades. The greater public, governments, customers, and other stakeholders have been demonstrating growing awareness of the social and environmental consequences of human activity in general, and of business operations in particular. Consequently, the public increasingly expects companies to acknowledge their social and environmental responsibilities and adjust their business practices accordingly to mitigate the negative impacts of their operations and positively contribute to the communities in which they operate. Along with the brisk development of tourism, problems surrounding related issues such as environmental protection and community development are becoming all the more closely tied to tourism-related companies. As a result, it is especially vital for these companies to focus on CSR. CSR is a relatively new but increasingly prevalent topic in the tourism literature. In recent years, most research has still been focusing on how to initiate CSR in tourism- related companies, while there is a lack of research about CSR discontinuation. To narrow this gap, the present study investigated general consumers＇ responses to tourism-related companies＇ discontinuation of CSR. Taking the hotel industry, which plays a representative and leading role for other tourism- related industries, as an example, this paper analyzes the functioning mechanism of the public＇ s reaction to this discontinuation. To test the research framework, the present study used the field experiment method on four proposed hypotheses through three experiments. The empirical outcome showed that： （1） discontinuation of charitable CSR by tourism-related companies can harm consumer attitudes toward such companies, （2） decrease in consumer attitudes toward tourism-related companies is greater for a self-serving motive than a public-serving motive; （3） decrease in consumer attitudes is greater for proactive discontinuation of CSR than for passive discontinuation; （4） decrease in consumer attitudes toward tourism-related companies is greater for long-term charitable CSR programs than for short-term charitable CSR. The present study finds that CSR practices are a double-edged sword for tourism-related companies. CSR can potentially promote a company＇ s corporate image through its initiation. Conversely, the company＇ s image can also be damaged when it stops CSR. To initiate better management practices regarding this phenomenon, the study proposes managerial strategies to minimize the negative effects of discontinuing CSR. First, tourism-related companies should not initiate CSR practices if they do not intend to carry them out over the long term. Second, when discontinuing CSR, the firm could take certain actions to decrease the negative effects, such as asserting that CSR is conducted with a public-serving motive, and that discontinuing it is done with a passive move. Third, announcement of discontinuation of CSR should intentionally exclude information on the duration for which CSR was conducted. This paper concludes by proposing some directions for future research.