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

<jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title><jats:p>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.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title><jats:p>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.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title><jats:p>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.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title><jats:p>Using real-world campaign materials demonstrated that a firm’s CSR campaign efforts can create important brand risks.</jats:p></jats:sec>