Abstract Based on netnography and grounded theory, this study uses 903 Weibo comments of four corporate social irresponsibility cases as data sources and makes a systematic study of the mechanism of public’s response to corporate social irresponsibility. Results demonstrate that the public’s response has experienced a three-stage process, which includes public’s attention, public’s cognition and public’s evaluation. The mechanism is as follows: ①the features of enterprise, the visibility, severity and rarity of corporate social irresponsibility have an impact on public’s attention by accelerating social agenda setting and the public groups establishment;②based on information collection and dissemination in the first stage, the public starts to attribute the irresponsible behavior to internal or external causes and determine whether it is intentional or unintentional; ③the result of the public’s attribution influences the public’s evaluation of the corporate brand, which is moderated by the corporate’s intrinsic image.
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Received: 31 July 2017
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