The Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Activities on Consumers Purchase Intention in China: Mediating Role of Consumer Support for Responsible Business

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has demonstrated the positive influence on consumer attitudes and buying behaviors. However the questions worth investigating are “how different CSR types influence consumer purchase intention?” Also, how does firm’s overall CSR lead to consumer purchase intention? The purpose of this investigation is to examine the intervening mechanism between CSR and consumer purchase intention. We expect consumer support for responsible business (CSRB) mediates the relationship between CSR and consumer purchase intention. We tested the hypotheses with data from dyad sample of 200 firms’ representatives and consumers from apparel industry in China. The result supported the hypothesized relationships between CSR, CSRB, and consumer purchase intention. Findings of this study contribute to the CSR and consumer attitude research. This study also discusses the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.


Introduction
Research has revealed that a growing number of consumers encourage and appreciate firm's voluntary activities that positively contribute to society (Lee & Lee, 2015).In a survey by McKinsey, 89% of consumers endorse and support companies that balance their obligations to their stakeholders and make contributions to the broader common good (Ramasamy & Yeung, 2009).Hence, company's voluntary responsibilities such as economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic towards a society in which it operates have been considered as CSR activities (Carroll, 1979).In other words business companies are not only to make profit but also are responsible to a society within which they operate (Fatma & Rahman, 2016).Research has revealed that consumer shows positive response towards companies engaged in CSR activities (Parsa, Lord, Putrevu, & Kreeger, 2015).Therefore, the CSR activities significantly contribute to business companies' image, consumers' purchase intention, and firm's long-term performance (Lee & Lee, 2015).
Although research studies report a positive influence of firm's CSR activities on consumer's purchase intention and buying decisions (Parsa et al., 2015;Lee & Lee, 2015), Fatma & Rahman (2016) consider the findings, relatively, inconclusive.Some studies have opined that consumers are not very much interested in firm's CSR activities because they usually focus more on their self-benefit.Therefore, the CSR activities, relatively, do not relate to company outcomes (Vaaland, Heide, & Grønhaug, 2008).Furthermore, most of the empirical work on CSR topic has been done in Anglo-Saxon countries, e.g., U.S. and U.K. Research revealed that there have been a few studies of consumer responses to CSR in China (Lee & Lee, 2015).Therefore, it is important to understand how CSR initiatives were taken in other countries and social contexts, especially in China, influence consumer response (Lee & Shin, 2010).The important questions that have not been answered in literature explicitly are: To what extent different types of CSR activities influence consumer purchase intention?How does firm's overall CSR lead to consumer purchase intention?CSR literature in several ways.First, it explains the effects of different types of CSR activities on consumer purchase intention.It provides profound commentary relationships between different types of CSR and consumer purchase intention.Second, it uncovers the underlying mechanism between CSR and consumer purchase intention.It illuminates a new way through which CSR influences consumer purchase intention.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Consumer Purchase Intention
In literature the concept of CSR has been referred to firm's decisions and actions taken beyond the firm's direct economic or technical interest (Davis, 1960;Carroll, 1979).It has also been considered as managerial obligations to take action to protect and improve both the welfare of society as a whole and the interest of the organization.According to the proactive social responsive view the CSR activities emphasize firm's long-term role in a dynamic social system (Mcgee, 1998).Therefore, firms take voluntary actions to become a responsible business entity of a society.These activities not only influence the sale of firm's products and consumers' purchase intention but also employees of the firm.Consumers associate certain expectations with the business entities (firms) that are operating in the society.When business firm's responses, in the form of CSR activities, exceed the consumers' expectations it affects consumer's overall evaluation of firm and its products (David, Kline, & Dai, 2005).
Research has also revealed that under certain conditions CSR activities have detrimental effects on the consumers' purchase intention (Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001).Little congruence and fit between firm's product and CSR activities may not lead to positive effect.Most of the studies in the literature reported the positive association of CSR activities and consumer responses and attitudes (Lee & Shin, 2010;Lee & Lee, 2015;Fatma & Rahman, 2016).It is very important to examine the influence of different CSR types on consumer purchase intention.Carroll (1991) suggested four types of social responsibilities that constitute total CSR.Those types of CSR are economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic.Detail commentary of CSR types visualizes how they are related to CSR and influence consumer purchase intention.

Economic CSR Activities
The business organizations are the basic economic units in any society (Carroll, 1979).The fundamental role of the business organization is to produce goods and services that society needs and wants, and to make an acceptable profit in the process.As an economic entity an organization produce goods and services for society, provide jobs, and opportunities for economic activities to the members of society.Through firm's economics activities members of the society earn their living.The Chinese government has established China Social Compliance 9000 for apparel industry that has significantly changed the implications of CSR activities in the industry (Nan & Heo, 2007).Research has suggested that due to the development of economic conditions and consumer purchasing power, Chinese consumers increasingly demand protection for their resources, communities, and environment (Lee & Lee, 2015).This forces firms to engage in responsible activities.Therefore, firms take voluntarily positive economics CSR activities to influence members of a society.The members of society establish association and bond with a business organization.Hence, firm's economic CSR activities positive influence members of the society.It also influences consumer purchase intention.Thus, we hypothesize that: Hypothesis 1: Firm's economic CSR activities positively relate to consumer purchase intention.

Legal CSR Activities
Society expects business organizations to comply with the laws and regulations of local government (Carroll, 1991).Organizations that pursue their economics objectives within the framework of local laws positively influence the members of society and also the consumers.Lee & Lee (2015) found that legal CSR activities positively influence consumer purchase intention.When a firm abides by the local laws and actively participate in activities which promote legal and fair business it sends message to its consumers that it honors the local regulation.Voluntarily abiding and promoting legal issues develop firm's soft image of fair business which ultimately influences consumer intention to purchase firm's products.Thus, based on the above commentary, we hypothesize: Hypothesis 2: Firm's legal CSR activities positively relate to consumer purchase intention

Data Analysis and Results
We used SPSS 22 and MPlus 7 to confirm the reliability and validity of the measures.Following the instruction of Marsh & Hau (1996), we tested model goodness of fit.A research model is considered good fit if comparative fit index (CFI) and Tucker-Lewis (TLI) values are greater than .90, and root means square error of approximation (RMSEA) is below .08 (Ngo, Foley, & Loi, 2009).Our study model showed good fit because all the indices values from our study results meet the required standards of valuesRMSEA =.06, CFI = .97,TLI = .92.To avoid the possible issue of common method variance (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003), we collected data from two sources.The firm's CSR activities were evaluated by firm representatives, whereas CSRB and consumer purchase intention were rated by consumers.

Descriptive Statistics
In Table 2, we present means, standard deviation, and intercorrelations of the variables used in the study.Using bivariate technique in SPSS with Pearson Correlation, we examined the association among study variables.The consumer purchase intention was correlated with CSR activities economic (.50), legal (.57), ethical (.60), and philanthropic (.65) at significance level p <.01.The four types of CSR responsibilities were highly correlated; therefore for precise and comprehensive results we aggregated those four dimensions into overall firm's CSR.Therefore, overall CSR was correlated with consumer purchase intention (.19) and with consumer support for responsible business .17(p< .01).Furthermore, the correlation between firm's overall CSR and consumer support for responsible business was .62 (p< .01).It shows a positive association between firm's CSR and consumer support for responsible business.We run variance inflation factor (VIF) test to check the possible issue of multicollinearity among the variables.The results showed that VIF values among independent variables (ECO, LEG, ETH, PHL, CSR) and moderating variable (CSRB) did not exceed the cutoff values of β = 2.00.Therefore, the problem of multicollinearity is not presented in our data.

Hypothesis Testing
We performed a linear regression to test the study hypothesis.Table 3 shows the regression results.The control variables age, gender, education, monthly income were not related to consumer purchase intention.In Model 3, CSR activities were positively related to consumer purchase intention.Therefore, the regression coefficient of economic CSR responsibilities with consumer purchase the intention was positive and significant (β = 0.14, p< .05).Thus regression coefficient is significant at p <0.05 level, which supports our hypothesis 1.The legal CSR responsibilities was positively related with consumer purchase intention (β = 0.22, p< .01).Hence, regression coefficient is significant at p <0.05 level, which supports our hypothesis 2. The ethical CSR responsibilities was positively related with consumer purchase intention (β = 0.17, p< .05).It supports our hypothesis 3 because regression coefficient is significant at p <0.05 level.The philanthropic CSR responsibilities was positively related with consumer purchase intention (β = 0.35, p< .01).It endorses our hypothesis 4 because regression coefficient is significant at p <0.05 level.The value of R-square (β = 0.52, p< .001)and F statistics (F = 28.44,p< .001)represent substantial level of model good of fit.Hence, our proposed hypothesis regarding types of CSR activities and consumer purchase intention are accepted.Furthermore we performed regression on overall CSR and consumer purchase intention.In Table 4, model 2, the overall CSR is positively related to consumer purchase intention (β = 0.20, p< .01).It supports the hypothesis 5. To examine mediation mechanism between overall CSR and consumer purchase intention, we perform mediation analysis following the instructions of Preacher & Hayes (2004) and Edwards & Lambert (2007).The model 3 in Table 4 shows that consumer support for responsible business fully mediates the relationship between firm's CSR and consumer purchase intention (β = 0.62, p< .01).Hence, hypothesis 6 is supported.The values of R-square (β = 0.39, p< .001)and F statistics (F = 22.29, p< .001)represented reasonable model good of fit.
We confirmed indirect effect using the bootstrap estimation approach with 20000 (Preacher & Hayes, 2004).The sum of indirect from firm's CSR to consumer purchase intention was 0.10 with 99 percent confidence intervals excluding zero (0.04-0.18).Robustness of our results confirmed that consumer support for responsible business mediates the relationship of CSR and consumer purchase intention.

Finding and Discussion
This investigation identified and examined the effect of different types of CSR responsibilities on consumer purchase intention in the apparel industry.This study also tested the theoretical model and confirmed that consumer support to responsible business mediates the relationship of CSR and consumer purchase intention.We discuss in detail the study results and implications below.
The economic CSR responsibilities positively influence consumer purchase intention.Relatively, consumers encourage and appreciate business firms that provide necessary goods to the society and earn an acceptable profit in this process (Carroll, 1979).Moreover, business firms that voluntarily obey local rules and regulation attract consumers' attention.Doing this develops an image of the responsible business firm, which most likely influences consumer purchase intention.When firm complies with social ethics it acknowledges the community moral principles.The firm's voluntary activities that promote, adopt, and cherish the social moral philosophy could gain substantial support from the society and community in which it operates.The existing research endorses earlier findings that firm's CSR responsibilities positively influence consumer purchase intention (Lee & Lee, 2015).The philanthropic activities contribute to social welfare and social good deeds such as firm's voluntary contribution to community welfare, support to children education, health facilities to the local community, and financial support to needy people.These activities attract public attention which contributes to receive public support for business.It confluences positive evaluation and purchase intention.
Another interesting finding of this is that philanthropic and legal responsibilities are more strongly related to consumer purchase intention than economic and ethical responsibilities.Furthermore, legal CSR responsibilities are less significant than philanthropic responsibilities.The business firms in apparel industry should emphasize more on philanthropic CSR activities as compared to economic, ethical, and legal CSR activities.The research endorses earlier findings that influence of philanthropic CSR actives goes beyond the effect of the economic CSR activities (Lee & Lee, 2015).That is, firm's CSR was more influential when it was supported by the consumers.When consumers support and endorse the firm's CSR activities, their intention to purchase firm's product tends to increase.The implementation of different types of CSR activities has different effects.The firm manager should consider the magnitude of their effect while implementing CSR activities.Market and social context should be considered when designing CSR initiatives.

Limitation and Future Directions
This study is not exempted from a few limitations.First, few aspects of consumers' attitude such as cognitive and affective are not examined.Since all aspects of consumer purchase attitude could not be investigated, a future research should be conducted to examine all the aspects of consumer purchase attitude and cognitive process of purchase intention.Second, we collected dyad sample from apparel industry which may influence generalizability of results.A cluster of consumers' purchase intention could enhance generalization of our findings.Future investigations should examine a cluster of consumers' purchase intention in different industries.Third, this study used survey questionnaires that represent the perception of consumer and firm's representative subjective psychological understanding.For more meaningful and profound understanding experiments in various contexts could be helpful for future studies.Future research is needed to establish causality between CSR activities and aspects of consumers' attitude.

Conclusion
The findings of this investigation present a compelling and comprehensive explanation of the relationship between CSR and consumer purchase intention.It explores meaningful effects of different CSR types on consumer purchase intention.The philanthropic CSR activities demonstrate the stronger influence on consumer purchase intention as compared to other CSR activities.The CSRB is identified as a significant underlying mechanism between CSR and consumer purchase intention.Most importantly, the CSRB significantly mediates the relationship between firm's overall CSR and consumer purchase intention.Finally, this study suggests that the strength of the relationship between different CSR types and consumer purchase intention is different.The mediating mechanism of CSRB illuminates the new way between CSR and consumer purchase intention.
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Table 3 .
The regression results