The Impact of Environmental and Societal CSR Messages on Purchase Intentions

Abstract: This thesis studies how the inclusion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) messages in advertisements influence consumers' purchase intentions in the Swedish Energy Sector. Through comparing the effects of TV commercials that either do or do not include CSR activities of the company, it was investigated how consumers' purchase intentions are affected when chosing energy provider. It was further investigated if the type of CSR message would matter by comparing TV commercials with either an environmental or societal content. This was conducted through a survey where respondents viewed one out of three videos that either had an environmental, societal or non-CSR content and they were all asked to answer the same questions. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was used as a framework to identify specific factors influencing purchase intentions. The findings show that there is no significant difference in purchase intentions among the consumers when exposed to the different TV commercials. However, a significant correlation between Control Beliefs and Intention was found when consumers were exposed to CSR messages. This study supports previous research showing that links in the TPB-model can change with exposure to CSR messages.