Abstract
The study investigated how corporate reputation (i.e., generalized favorability), motivation attribution of corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviors, and income level impact local residents’ support for a corporate new investment project (CNIP). By analyzing 133 new investment projects of listed firms in China from 2004 to 2017, we found that local residents’ support for a CNIP can be positively influenced by generalized favorability and motivation attribution of CSR behaviors, but negatively influenced by their income level. The positive effect of generalized favorability is more effective when the motivation of CSR behaviors is attributed to higher altruism. Meanwhile, the interaction between generalized favorability and income level reveals that the positive effect of generalized favorability is stronger when local residents are at a higher income level. Our results also show that when altruism and income level are at a low level, the positive effect of generalized favorability will be overturned and its negative effect will emerge. Overall, this study contributes to the research on corporate reputation, CSR behavior and corporate project management.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abdellaoui, M., Bleichrodt, H., l’Haridon, O., & Van Dolder, D. 2016. Measuring loss aversion under ambiguity: A method to make prospect theory completely observable. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 52(1): 1–20.
Bromiley, P. 2010. Looking at prospect theory. Strategic Management Journal, 31(12): 1357–1370.
Chava, S. 2014. Environmental externalities and cost of capital. Management Science, 60(9): 2223–2247.
Chernev, A., & Blair, S. 2015. Doing well by doing good: The benevolent halo of corporate social responsibility. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(6): 1412–1425.
Clark, W. A., & Lisowski, W. 2017. Prospect theory and the decision to move or stay. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(36): E7432–E7440.
Connelly, B. L., Certo, S. T., Ireland, R. D., & Reutzel, C. R. 2011. Signaling theory: A review and assessment. Journal of Management, 37(1): 39–67.
Coombs, W. T. 1995. Choosing the right words: The development of guidelines for the selection of the “appropriate” crisis-response strategies. Management Communication Quarterly, 8(4): 447–476.
Crilly, D., Ni, N., & Jiang, Y. 2016. Do-no-harm versus do-good social responsibility: Attributional thinking and the liability of foreignness. Strategic Management Journal, 37(7): 1316–1329.
Dear, M. 1992. Understanding and overcoming the NIMBY syndrome. Journal of the American Planning Association, 58(3): 288–300.
Deephouse, D. L. 2000. Media reputation as a strategic resource: An integration of mass communication and resource-based theories. Journal of Management, 26(6): 1091–1112.
Dorobantu, S., & Odziemkowska, K. 2017. Valuing stakeholder governance: Property rights, community mobilization, and firm value. Strategic Management Journal, 38(13): 2682–2703.
Du, X., Chang, Y., Zeng, Q., Du, Y., & Pei, H. 2016. Corporate environmental responsibility (CER) weakness, media coverage, and corporate philanthropy: Evidence from China. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 33(2): 551–581.
Ellen, P. S., Webb, D. J., & Mohr, L. A. 2006. Building corporate associations: Consumer attributions for corporate socially responsible programs. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 34(2): 147–157.
Fischer, E., & Reuber, R. 2007. The good, the bad, and the unfamiliar: The challenges of reputation formation facing new firms. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 31(1): 53–75.
Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. 1991. Social cognition. New York:Mcgraw-Hill Book.
Fombrun, C. J. 1996. Reputation: Realizing value from the corporate image. Boston:Harvard University Press.
Frooman, J. 1999. Stakeholder influence strategies. Academy of Management Review, 24(2): 191–205.
Gattiker, T. F., & Carter, C. R. 2010. Understanding project champions’ ability to gain intra-organizational commitment for environmental projects. Journal of Operations Management, 28(1): 72–85.
Gibbons, R., & Henderson, R. 2012. Relational contracts and organizational capabilities. Organization Science, 23(5): 1350–1364.
Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. 1995. The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117(1): 21–38.
Godfrey, P. C., Merrill, C. B., & Hansen, J. M. 2009. The relationship between corporate social responsibility and shareholder value: An empirical test of the risk management hypothesis. Strategic Management Journal, 30(4): 425–445.
Handelman, J. M., & Arnold, S. J. 1999. The role of marketing actions with a social dimension: Appeals to the institutional environment. Journal of Marketing, 63(3): 33–48.
Henisz, W. J., Dorobantu, S., & Nartey, L. J. 2014. Spinning gold: The financial returns to stakeholder engagement. Strategic Management Journal, 35(12): 1727–1748.
Hou, M., Liu, H., Fan, P., & Wei, Z. 2016. Does CSR practice pay off in east Asian firms? A meta-analytic investigation. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 33(1): 195–228.
Husted, B. W., & de Jesus Salazar, J. 2006. Taking Friedman seriously: Maximizing profits and social performance. Journal of Management Studies, 43(1): 75–91.
Ingram, P., Yue, L. Q., & Rao, H. 2010. Trouble in store: Probes, protests, and store openings by Wal-Mart, 1998–2007. American Journal of Sociology, 116(1): 53–92.
Kerzner, H. 1992. Project management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. New York:Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Kilpatrick, R. W. 1973. The income elasticity of the poverty line. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 55(3): 327–332.
Kirmani, A., & Rao, A. R. 2000. No pain, no gain: A critical review of the literature on signaling unobservable product quality. Journal of Marketing, 64(2): 66–79.
van Knippenberg, D., & Daamen, D. 1996. Providing information in public opinion surveys: Motivation and ability effects in the information-and-choice questionnaire. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 8(1): 70–82.
Krohn, S., & Damborg, S. 1999. On public attitudes towards wind power. Renewable Energy, 16(1–4): 954–960.
Lange, D., Lee, P. M., & Dai, Y. 2011. Organizational reputation: A review. Journal of Management, 37(1): 153–184.
Lo, C. K., Tang, C. S., Zhou, Y., Yeung, A. C., & Fan, D. 2018. Environmental incidents and the market value of firms: An empirical investigation in the Chinese context. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 20(3): 422–439.
Mishina, Y., Block, E. S., & Mannor, M. J. 2012. The path dependence of organizational reputation: How social judgment influences assessments of capability and character. Strategic Management Journal, 33(5): 459–477.
Morewedge, C. K., & Giblin, C. E. 2015. Explanations of the endowment effect: An integrative review. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19(6): 339–348.
Munyon, T. P., Jenkins, M. T., Crook, T. R., Edwards, J., & Harvey, N. P. 2019. Consequential cognition: Exploring how attribution theory sheds new light on the firm-level consequences of product recalls. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 40(5): 587–602.
Myers, S. C., & Majluf, N. S. 1984. Corporate financing and investment decisions when firms have informationthat investors do not have. Journal of Financial Economics, 13(2): 187–221.
Newburry, W., Gardberg, N. A., & Belkin, L. Y. 2006. Organizational attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder: The interaction of demographic characteristics with foreignness. Journal of International Business Studies, 37(5): 666–686.
Pfarrer, M. D., Pollock, T. G., & Rindova, V. P. 2010. A tale of two assets: The effects of firm reputation and celebrity on earnings surprises and investors’ reactions. Academy of Management Journal, 53(5): 1131–1152.
Rhee, M., & Haunschild, P. R. 2006. The liability of good reputation: A study of product recalls in the U.S. automobile industry. Organization Science, 17(1): 101–117.
Rindova, V. P., Petkova, A. P., & Kotha, S. 2007. Standing out: How new firms in emerging markets build reputation. Strategic Organization, 5(1): 31–70.
Rindova, V. P., Williamson, I. O., Petkova, A. P., & Sever, J. M. 2005. Being good or being known: An empirical examination of the dimensions, antecedents, and consequences of organizational reputation. Academy of Management Journal, 48(6): 1033–1049.
Skarmeas, D., & Leonidou, C. N. 2013. When consumers doubt, watch out! The role of CSR skepticism. Journal of Business Research, 66(10): 1831–1838.
Spence, M. 1973. Job market signaling. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87(3): 355–374.
Sun, Z., Wu, D., & Zhang, M. 2019. Better late than never? Corporate social responsibility engagement after product-harm crises. Asia Pacific Journal of Management. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-019-09701-0.
Sun, L., Yung, E. H., Chan, E. H., & Zhu, D. 2016. Issues of NIMBY conflict management from the perspective of stakeholders: A case study in Shanghai. Habitat International, 53(1): 133–141.
Tan, J., Qin, X., & Gong, L. 2019. Assessing public satisfaction of freeway closure measures in fog and haze weather: A questionnaire-based study in Hubei Province, China. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 304(3): 032051.
Toder-Alon, A., Rosenstreich, E., & Te’eni Harari, T. 2019. Give or take? Consumers’ ambivalent perspectives on the relationship between a firm’s corporate social responsibility engagement and its responsible tax payments. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 26(4): 872–884.
Walker, K. 2010. A systematic review of the corporate reputation literature: Definition, measurement, and theory. Corporate Reputation Review, 12(4): 357–387.
Wei, J., Ouyang, Z., & Chen, H. 2017. Well known or well liked? The effects of corporate reputation on firm value at the onset of a corporate crisis. Strategic Management Journal, 38(10): 2103–2120.
West, B., Hillenbrand, C., Money, K., Ghobadian, A., & Ireland, R. D. 2016. Exploring the impact of social axioms on firm reputation: A stakeholder perspective. British Journal of Management, 27(2): 249–270.
Williamson, O. E. 1996. The mechanisms of governance. New York:Oxford University Press.
Wolsink, M. 1994. Entanglement of interests and motives: Assumptions behind the NIMBY-theory on facility siting. Urban Studies, 31(6): 851–866.
Wolsink, M. 2000. Wind power and the NIMBY-myth: Institutional capacity and the limited significance of public support. Renewable Energy, 21(1): 49–64.
Xu, J., Wei, J., & Lu, L. 2019. Strategic stakeholder management, environmental corporate social responsibility engagement, and financial performance of stigmatized firms derived from Chinese special environmental policy. Business Strategy and the Environment, 28(6): 1027–1044.
Xu, Y., & Zeng, G. 2020. Corporate social performance aspiration and its effects. Asia Pacific Journal of Management. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-020-09706-0.
Zavyalova, A., Pfarrer, M. D., Reger, R. K., & Shapiro, D. L. 2012. Managing the message: The effects of firm actions and industry spillovers on media coverage following wrongdoing. Academy of Management Journal, 55(5): 1079–1101.
Zhang, Z., Jia, M., & Wan, D. 2012. When does a partner’s reputation impact cooperation effects in partnerships? Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 29(3): 547–571.
Zhu, Y., Sun, L. Y., & Leung, A. S. 2014. Corporate social responsibility, firm reputation, and firm performance: The role of ethical leadership. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 31(4): 925–947.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China grants #72025402, #71921001 and #71828102, and Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (2013284).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
There is no conflict of interest between this research and other parties. The work described has not been submitted elsewhere for publication, in whole or in part, and all the authors listed have approved the manuscript that is enclosed.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
ESM 1
(DOC 550 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Li, Z., Wei, J. & Ge, Y.G. Local Support for the Corporate New Investment Project: The Roles of Corporate Reputation, Project’s CSR Behavior and Residential Income Level. Asia Pac J Manag 40, 59–85 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-021-09779-5
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-021-09779-5