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 firm’s 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 firm’s 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 firm’s ethicality.