Corporate social advocacy (CSA) has become more prominent as companies continue taking stands on politically charged social issues. This study examines emotions and issue involvement as antecedents of theory of planned behavior variables (attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) to predict CSA response behaviors. A survey (N = 373) was conducted to examine the public’s response to a recent CSA example – Nike’s ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Purpose: This study examines how congruent moral conviction between an individual and a company impacts organization-public relationships (OPR). Using arguments from the Attribution Theory, this study also examines how individuals' perceptions of company motives impact the quality of the OPR. This study offers new understanding of what drives individuals' supporting behaviors regarding a company's advocacy efforts and how individual and company ethics contribute to OPR.Design/methodology/approach: This study conducts an online survey (N = 267) to examine the role of moral conviction as a predictor of OPR in the context of corporate social advocacy (CSA). Four types of attributions are examined as a mediating variable.Findings: Results indicate that moral congruency between an individual and an organization directly leads to stronger trust and power balance and that moral conviction positively predicts all four OPR dimensions through values-driven attributions.Originality/value: This study is novel in its inclusion of the moral conviction variable examined in a CSA context, as the role of ethics, or ethical applications, has not been widely examined in this body of literature.

Purpose: This study examines why publics support corporate social advocacy (CSA) by looking at their support as a form of collective action that is motivated by individuals' shared group efficacy, anger and politicized identity by applying the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA).Design/methodology/approach: This study adopted an online survey (N = 273), sampling US adults who supported a company's CSA effort.Findings: The survey found that shared group efficacy with the company led to higher intention to participate in CSA, engaging in positive word of mouth (PWOM) and providing financial support for the CSA cause. Individuals' identification with the company and the CSA cause also predicted intention to support CSA and PWOM. Sharing CSA cause-related anger with the company negatively predicted PWOM.Originality/value: This study is original as it investigated why and how people support for a company's CSA initiative by applying the SIMCA model. It extends the applicability of the SIMCA model to explain support for CSA. Moreover, this study enriches our theoretical understanding of CSA as it provides implications for why publics support CSA and how corporations can play a central role in gaining publics' support while taking stances on controversial issues.

Purpose: Using the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as a theoretical framework, this study investigates individual level psychological determinants of individuals word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions as a way to support corporate social advocacy (CSA).Design/methodology/approach: An online survey (N = 505) using a Qualtrics panel was conducted.Findings: Individuals' attitudes towards WOM, subjective norms, and self-efficacy was positively associated with their positive WOM intention, whereas perceived controllability over WOM behaviors was not associated with WOM intention. Age was negatively associated with WOM intention.Originality/value: This study is one of the early attempts to test individual level factors in shaping individuals' WOM intention in response to CSA. This study also employed recent TPB argument and tested the role of self-efficacy and perceived controllability on behavioral intentions in the context of corporate communication. The findings of this study offer theoretical and practical insights to corporations when developing CSA campaigns and designing CSA messages.

Although companies have started to adopt native CSR advertising for crisis communication, no existing research has examined this new phenomenon. To fill the gap, this study tested how crisis type and ad identification influence the effectiveness of native CSR advertising as a post-crisis response strategy. An online experiment was conducted using a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults. The results indicated that perceived manipulativeness was the underlying mechanism of how ad identification impaired consumer responses. Crisis type affected advertising effectiveness through consumers’ attributions of crisis responsibility and values-driven CSR motive. More importantly, ad identification significantly impaired consumers’ attitudes toward a native CSR advertisement and their intention to share the advertisement in the victim crisis condition, but not in the accidental or intentional crisis condition. These findings provide meaningful contributions to both the research and practice of CSR advertising.