Corporate social responsibility communication strategies of hotel companies

Abstract

The perception of motivation for corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities among individuals plays a crucial role in achieving successful outcomes. Therefore it is essential to gain an understanding of how different CSR activities can affect the perception of motivation for corporate social responsibility with a view to ensuring the success of a hotel’s CSR strategy. This study aims to explore the effects of proactive and reactive communication strategies employed by hotel companies in relation to CSR with a view to identifying how these strategies impact perceptions of CSR motivation and the subsequent influence on company outputs. To facilitate comparison between the two groups an experimental design utilizing a fictional hotel brochure and two contrasting newspaper articles has been created. The newspaper articles have been fictionalized in accordance with both proactive and reactive CSR communication strategies. The study sample comprises 406 participants and the data has been analyzed using structural equation modelling and t-tests. The findings indicate that perceptions of CSR motivation play a pivotal role in hotel evaluation. The proactive scenario is perceived as more value-driven by the first group whereas in the second group the reactive scenario is regarded as more strategy-oriented. Furthermore the proactive group exhibits relatively more positive evaluations of firms in comparison. Consequently there is an imperative for hotel companies to consider the interconnections between these variables when designing their CSR communication strategies. © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.