No I won't, but yes we will: Driving sustainability-related donations through social identity effects

Abstract

Shifting consumers towards sustainable behaviours is difficult, with an attitude-behaviour gap persistently reported. This study proposes a route towards sustainable behaviours that does not depend on individual attitudes or values: social identity forces within novel online brandconvened consumer groups. A field experiment using a fictitious fruit drink brand demonstrates that by assembling an online consumer group and providing it with sustainability objectives, consumers will engage in a sustainability-aligned behaviour, namely donating to social or environmental charities at the request of the firm, irrespective of their individual attitudes. Furthermore, this behaviour is accompanied by an improvement in brand attachment. As these effects are found within a newly-formed online group, practitioners may be able to achieve sustainability objectives through this mechanism even in the absence of well-established brand communities. The study contributes to social identity literature by demonstrating the impact of group identity effects in a consumer context, and by showing a mechanism by which the negative side of group identity-out-group derogation-can be avoided.

Effects of Power and Implicit Theories on Donation

“…Pro-social behavior is defined as the voluntary behavior intended to benefit others (Bierhoff, 2002). This can be direct or indirect in nature (Urbonavicius et al, 2019) and can be in the form of sustainability-related behaviors (Champniss et al, 2016), financial donations (O'Loughlin Banks and Raciti, 2018), blood donations (Pentecost et al, 2017) and purchasing cause-related products (Urbonavicius et al, 2019), amongst others.…”

The dawn of traditional CX metrics? Examining satisfaction, EXQ, and WAR

“…Studies in different contexts could assist us in scrutinizing the findings generalizability about the negative relationship between CX/CSat and share-of-category. For example, Champniss, Wilson, Macdonald, & Dimitriu (2016) discovered that customers are in very different mindsets during consumption and that those social identities can be created and influenced. This indicates a great opportunity to explore how CX is affected by a change in identity from the customer and how this can be used to put consumers in a state of amplified CX quality.…”

Leveraging corporate sustainability through responsible innovation: Capacity building with exploration and exploitation

“…The incorporation of sustainable behaviour by consumers might become a part of their social identity and drive them to consume more sustainability‐related goods/services such as fair trade or organic products (Bartels & Reinders, 2016). Therefore, providing a brand with sustainability objectives increases people's sustainability‐related behaviours (e.g., donation) and improves their brand attachment (Champniss et al, 2016).…”

“…The study uses the theoretical lens of social identity approach (Tajfel, 1972; Tajfel & Turner, 1979) to explain how social and environmental practices can be beneficial for organizations by increasing the attachment of employees (e.g., Carmeli et al, 2017; Van Dick et al, 2020) or customers (e.g., Champniss et al, 2016; Jones et al, 2017). In doing so, the current study proposes a mechanism of bridging and bonding corporate sustainability with diverse stakeholder demands through the identification of these stakeholders—employees and customers; here, responsible innovation acts like (1) a Rosetta Stone, which enables organizations to translate their sustainability efforts into something meaningful for stakeholders and (2) a lens that can magnify what is essential for these stakeholders by resolving sustainability paradox.…”