Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve: Exploring Moral Identity as a Moderator Across CSR Authenticity, Consumer Admiration, and Engagement in the Fashion Industry

Abstract

A rapidly shifting, hyper-sensitive modern fashion industry, coupled with an increasingly developing global environmental concern, has seen to an ever-imperative role for corporate social responsibility (CSR) to play in the successful operation of fashion companies. This study primarily investigates effective measures for successful CSR implementation in both corporate and consumer domains, looking at Patagonia, an exemplar company with an environmental mission, to understand the central contributions of active consumer engagement to the success of CSR initiatives. We explore consumer admiration as a concept necessary to elevate CSR practices from image maintenance to genuine engagement and advocacy, and how such admiration could be cultivated on the consumerside, investigating perceived CSR authenticity and corporate self-sacrifice as primary determinants. Specifically, we speculate the asymmetric role of consumers’ moral identity, revealing that moral identity symbolization positively interacts with both determinants while negatively moderating the relationship of these intentions and consumer admiration. We derive our analysis from diverse international and Korean data, concluding with theoretical and managerial implications for domestic and international companies in pursuit of environmental CSR campaigns that bridge consumer and company, as well as limitations and future research directions.

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