Author: Patricia Martínez, Ángel Herrero & Maria del Mar García de los Salmones
Summary:
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an essential concept in the context of the hospitality industry, where it is considered as a significant factor in competition and firms’s survival. However, little is known about the factors that influence electronic word of mouth (eWOM) regarding CSR communication through social media in the hotel context. This research proposes a comprehensive model including expressive information sharing, environmental consciousness, homophily and attitude towards sharing firms’s content (both commercial information and about environmental CSR issues) as predictors of individuals’s intention to share firms’s content on a specific social networking site (SNS). To test the model empirically, Facebook users were surveyed in Spain. Empirical testing confirms most of the hypothesized effects except the influence of expressive information sharing on attitude towards sharing firms’s environmental CSR content, the impact of homophily on attitude towards sharing firms’s commercial content, and the influence of this variable on intentions to share content on Facebook.
