Consumer Ethics and Fashion Corporate Social Responsibility-Attributions of Fashion CSR Motives and Perceptions

This study examines the impact of consumer ethics on the CSR motive attributions and, the subsequent consumer perception of the firms ethicality. Data of 512 adults were collected nationwide using a self-administered questionnaire online. Exploratory and confirmative factor analysis were employed to identify six underlying dimensions of consumer ethics, as follows: actively benefiting from illegal actions, passively benefiting from illegal actions, no harm/no foul, economic benefiting from illegal actions, intellectual property infringement, and pro-environmental behavior. In order to examine the relationships between consumer ethics, CSR motive attribution, and consumer perceived ethicality, a structural equation modeling test was conducted. The results demonstrated that actively benefiting from illegal actions, economic benefiting from illegal action, and pro-environmental behavior had impacts on CSR motive attributions such as strategy-driven attribution, value-driven attribution, and stakeholder-driven attribution. Consequently, strategy-driven attribution and value-driven attribution influenced the consumer perception of the firms ethicality, whereas stakeholder-driven attribution did not. This study provides an understanding of the CSR attribution mechanism from the view of consumer ethics that are multi-dimensional. The ethical judgements on different types of consumer behavior lead to attributions of CSR motives and subsequently their perception of a firms ethicality.