The CSR paradox: when a social responsibility campaign can tarnish a brand

The purpose of this paper is to explore the corporate social responsibility (CSR) paradox, when a social campaign hurts the sponsoring brand even while raising concern for the campaign issue.

A between-subjects experiment tested the effects of regulatory frames, issue involvement and collective efficacy on brand attitude, attitude toward the campaign messages, and concern for the issue.

A promotion-oriented frame (vs prevention-oriented frame) produced a more unfavorable brand attitude among consumers who had low levels of collective efficacy, even though the promotion-oriented frame generated strong concern for the issue itself. Attitudes toward the campaign messages remained favorable, suggesting that the negative effect of message frames was directly specifically at the brand.

Using real-world campaign materials demonstrated that a firm’s CSR campaign efforts can create important brand risks.