The Effect Of Corporate Social Responsibility During Product-Harm Crisis: Proposing A Model Related To Consumers’ Attribution Process

The rapid transformations in environmental factors make firms to expose to crisis. Preventing the emergence of the crisis is not always possible, however successful crisis management can be minimize the negative effects. Acquittal campaigns which emphasize the positive image of the firm before crisis may be used frequently during crisis management period. In such campaigns social responsibility activities which is one of the dimensions of reputation is drawn dramatically. The aim of this research is to reveal the effect of being a socially responsible company on the elements of consumers’ attribution process. In this regard, a model that addresses the attribution process is proposed and to test this model a quantitative research is designed based on the scenarios, then responses of the 1000 participants are evaluated. The results show that attribution process occurs in the form as “attribution-emotion-behavior” like in the proposed model, the effects of social responsibility on the components of attribution process change based on being socially responsible or not