The Theory of Reasoned Action to CSR Behavioral Intentions: The Role of CSR Expected Benefit, CSR Expected Effort and Stakeholders

During the past several years, many governments and non-government organizations in the world made efforts to promote policies and activities regarding corporate social responsibility and proposal of relevant regulations. However, scandals of international financial organizations and transnational corporations are enduring issues, which threaten to reduce social responsibility to a mere corporate slogan. This is not only the basis for sustainable operations but, also it is a vital academic issue. Understanding the factors behind the intention of a corporation's social responsibility practice is a problem that governments and other governance organizations urgently need to solve and is also an issue that scholars and other relevant workers need to pay attention to and investigate. This study tries to discuss the behavioral intention behind social responsibility practices, and to point out exogenous factors, corresponding with theory of reasoned action, among the factors proposed by literature regarding corporate social responsibility. Then we apply structural equation modelling to analyze each hypothesis of the study. Finally, the results show several determinants which empirically affect behavioral intentions towards social responsibility practices. This study serves as a supplement for present literature, which did not clearly explain the reason why corporations hesitate to put social responsibility into action. In addition, although the theory of reasoned action was widely used to discuss the motive of various reasoned actions, the current study might be a pioneer in using theory of reasoned action to discuss the behavioral models for corporate social responsibility practices and discussing the applicability of the theory of reasoned action based on empirical data.