| Author: | Chan, Kwok Kin |
| Title: | Consumer response to hospitality CSR strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic : examining a mechanism of attribution |
| Advisors: | Hon, Alice (SHTM) |
| Degree: | DHTM |
| Year: | 2024 |
| Subject: | Social responsibility of business Hospitality industry Corporate image Tourism COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020-2023 Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | School of Hotel and Tourism Management |
| Pages: | xi, 145 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | The world has faced various crises in the past, with the COVID-19 pandemic being the latest and possibly the largest crisis in the past decades. In response to the pandemic, 96% of global destinations have issued travel bans and lockdowns in early 2020 (UNWTO, 2020c), leaving tourism on a complete halt and forcing businesses to save costs as much as possible in order to survive. International tourism did not recover until late 2022 after some countries started lifting their travel bans aiming to support tourism businesses whilst safeguarding public health (UNWTO, 2020b, 2023b). When the international tourists travel again after the pandemic, their perception of the image of the businesses could affect where they want to stay when they plan for the next trip. Therefore, tourism businesses should develop a strategy for maintaining or even improving their image during the crisis. Managers generally perceive corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a good strategy for improving their organisational image, but the extent of its effectiveness in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic remains unknown. As CSR has been studied for many years, people’s understanding of such concept has evolved of time (Carroll, 1999), yet some of its aspects remain academically unexplored in the literature (Ajina, Japutra, Nguyen, Alwi & Al-Hajla, 2019; Carroll, 1999; Fatima & Elbanna, 2023). Different stakeholders are increasingly expecting CSR to be more than superficial action making CSR ever more important in organisational strategic settings (Fatima & Elbanna, 2023). In particular, customers are demanding more businesses to engage in CSR as they believe that these businesses should contribute back to society after making their profit (Iglesias, Markovic, Bagherzadeh & Singh, 2020). They pressure these businesses by purchasing goods and services only from those brands that share the same values. In response to these pressures, businesses have become more proactive in their CSR actions and started embedding CSR into their business strategies, which may become their competitive advantage (Chang, 2015; Porter & Van der Linde, 1995). These CSR actions not only enhance their organisational image (Kim, Song, Lee & Lee, 2017; Lamond, Dwyer, Arendt & Brettel, 2010) but also turn into a ‘reservoir of goodwill’ at times of crisis (Godfrey, Merrill & Hansen, 2009; Janssen, Sen & Bhattacharya, 2015). This study explores the potential effects of CSR on the organisational image of tourism businesses and investigates how such image may affect consumer behaviour in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing from attribution theory, this study develops a research model 1) to analyse the mediating effect of organisational image on the relationship between CSR and consumer behaviour (e.g. visit intention) and 2) to test the mediating effect of attribution on the formation of organisational image amongst tourists based on CSR actions. The COVID-19 pandemic is worth exploring due to its global scale and unique nature that was not seen in decades (Senbeto & Hon, 2020a; WHO, 2020b). This study contributes to the literature on CSR, crisis management, organisational image and attribution theory by understanding how consumer behaviour may change during a pandemic. The framework and questionnaires were designed based on Weiner’s achieve motivation model. This study used descriptive statistics, CFA, ANOVA, regression and mediation analysis to examine the data. Results show that organisational image fully mediates the relationship between CSR and visit intention, and two of the three attribution dimensions mediate the relationship between CSR and organisational image. The implications of these results to research and practice were also discussed. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7859.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 1.57 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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