The Consumer Perception of Corporate Social Responsibility Motives During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Key Link between Social Media Influencer Credibility, Brand Attitude, and Purchase Intention

While corporations increase corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, little research has examined how social media influencers (SMI) endorsement for CSR activities during COVID-19 pandemic could help the brand to yield more desire consumer responses. To fill this gap, using attribution theory, we examine how perceived CSR motives (social vs self-serving motives) mediate the impacts of SMI credibility on consumer brand attitude, and subsequently purchase intention. Our results indicate that sharing from credible SMIs highlight the attribution of social-serving CSR motives of the brand that, in turn, trigger favourable customer attitude toward the brand, and purchase intention. Conversely, there is no mediating effect of self-serving CSR motives for SMIs sharing, customer attitude, and purchase intention. Our results provide both theoretical and practical contributions by highlighting the importance of CSR social motives in marketing communications using SMIs endorsements.