Truly Sustainability or Hypocrisy: The Effects of Corporate Sustainable Orientation on Consumers’ Quality Perception and Trust Based on Evidence from China

Abstract

Sustainable initiatives have been widely fulfilled by corporations, which can acquire better reputations by performing environmental, social, and economic responsibilities. However, if a corporation’s propaganda about sustainable orientation is contrary to the actual action, or even does not have a clear orientation, then it may also fall into the reputation of hypocrisy. In this study, from the perspective of consumer behavior and based on the moral responsibility theory of corporate sustainability, we identify six types of sustainable corporations by their orientations toward sustainability, including value, goals, and structure. We empirically examine their direct effects on consumers’ sustainable quality perception and trust, as well as the moderating effects of corporate social responsibility associations and consumer–corporation identity. Data are collected in China; 203 adults participated in the survey. The results reveal that the types of sustainable goals and structure have a significant effect on consumers’ sustainable quality perception and trust. Furthermore, consumers’ perception is also positively associated with their trust in a corporation. Moreover, the consumer–corporation identity negatively moderates the relationship between perception and trust. These findings also bring theoretical and practical insights for governments and corporations.

Business orientation and sustainable development: A systematic review of sustainability orientation literature and future research avenues

“…Sustainability orientation has a positive association with firms' marketing practices (V at am anescu, Gazzola, Dinc a, & Pezzetti, 2017), thus firms with marketing innovation tools have a more eco-friendly approach (Fiore, Silvestri, Contò, & Pellegrini, 2017). In this vein, sustainability-oriented firms are positively viewed by the customers because it has positive impacts on customer trust, their quality perceptions and satisfaction (Gerdt, Wagner, & Schew, 2019;Liang, Hu, & Meng, 2020). Moreover, previous studies have reported the positive impacts of a firms' sustainability orientation on its legitimating behavior (Reynolds et al, 2018), SSM practices (Shou et al, 2019), carbon strategy, and performance (Moussa, Allam, Elbanna, & Bani-Mustafa, 2020).…”

Corporate Environmentalism: An Emerging Economy Perspective

“…Consumers have a strong influence on companies with regard to product performance, product safety, and environmental impact, and the companies having direct customer interactions are more likely to adopt environmentally friendly practices [26]. The type of sustainable goals and structure of an organization have implications for customer's sustainable quality perceptions [27].…”

Antecedents and mediators of experiential retailing consumer behavior

“…We used SPSS 22.0 software to test 427 valid samples following a previous study (Liang et al, 2020(Liang et al, , 2022. These results (Table 2) show that the overall α is 0.902, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value is 0.887 and the α of each variable is all greater than 0.6.…”