Green CSR communication in the service industry : strategy development for a hotel's informative and persuasive green messages [article]

Eun Yeon Kang
2016
companies are ambivalent toward CSR communication because it may backfire by provoking condemnation from the belief that companies are mainly trying to benefit themselves via CSR practices, which are, in actuality, supposed to benefit society (Schlegelmilch & Pollach, 2005) . Differently stated, hotels face challenges communicating their CSR actions while maintaining genuine credibility of their role as socially responsible members of society (Brønn & Vrioni, 2001; Duncan & Moriarty, 1998)
more » ... ut evoking the belief of being avaricious or deceptive (Foreh & Grier, 2003) . Further, there are several reasons that CSR communication is becoming more important and intricate. First, consumers have a high interest in companies' CSR involvement. Consumers these days demand corporations to be good society-mates that contribute to and share their community, culture, and environment. They also increasingly want to be aware of what companies do in their CSR domain (Nielsen, 2013) to make sure that companies act as "good citizens" (Andreu, Casado-Diaz, & Mattila, 2015). Second, because individuals engage in different information and reasoning processes to understand corporate messages, companies should take discreet approaches in their CSR communication to prevent consumers from arriving at unintended, distorted conclusions. These various issues serve as a backdrop to inspire the investigation of CSR communication strategies so that corporations, including hotels, do not jeopardize the success of their CSR efforts. Even as substantial research has been devoted to environmental CSR practices, especially in the hotel area (Kang, Stein, Heo, & Lee, 2012) , CSR communication needs more in-depth research (Reisch, 2006) . This manuscript helps broaden the understanding CSR COMMUNICATION For intended positive consequences of CSR practices, hotels need to show their philanthropic endeavors to the public. Accordingly, CSR communication is an essential aspect in their CSR engagement. Scholars conclude that CSR communication is mandatory for firms in conjunction with actual CSR performance because it enables companies to handle unexpected or negative CSR-related issues (Brønn & Vrioni, 2001) . However, while extensive emphasis has been given to CSR engagement, CSR communication remains under-investigated (Reisch, 2006; Ziek, 2009) . As CSR communication is in the early stages of development (Wanderley, Lucian, Farache, & de Sousa Filho, 2008) , more attention needs to be devoted to better understand diverse CSR communication behavior and establish empirically effective communication strategies. Research in CSR Communication Not only have stakeholders' expectations of corporations' pro-social efforts highlighted the importance of communicating CSR initiatives, firms' marketing intentions have also underscored the need. Researchers confirmed the positive influences of CSR communication, which were largely focused on the consumer domain, but not confined to it. Particularly, as firms utilize their resources, which are stakeholders' investment, it is a firm's duty to let them know what they do with the resources for CSR practices. Besides, although consumers seek CSR information to judge whether companies operate ethically and socially responsibly, and further expect them to continuously update their CSR information, they often have difficulty accessing enough information (Podnar, 2008) to form solid conclusions.
doi:10.15781/t2c824d7d fatcat:ye6xe4di5fezjesvpmazsagtge