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Consumer Social Responsibility (CnSR)

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management

  • 289 Accesses

Synonyms

Consumer activism; Ethical consumerism; Ethical purchasing; Ethical shopping; Ethical sourcing; Green consumerism; Mindful consumption; Moral purchasing

Description

Despite the extensive debate as to what corporate social responsibility (CSR) is, consumer social responsibility (CnSR) has received very limited attention by researchers and practitioners (Quazi et al. 2016) and remains a term that is largely unexplored and under-theorized (Vogel 2005; Caruana and Chatzidakis 2014). Very few of the many articles about CSR discuss the role of the consumer in achieving corporate social responsibility even though it will be difficult if not impossible for corporate social responsibility to succeed without the assistance of consumers (Vitell 2015).

In its broadest form, consumer social responsibility can be defined as “the conscious and deliberate choice to make certain consumption choices based on personal and moral beliefs” (Devinney et al. 2006). It mainly shows up in two...

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References and Readings

  • Caruana, R., & Chatzidakis, A. (2014). Consumer social responsibility (CnSR): Toward a multi-level, multi-agent conceptualization of the “other CSR”. Journal of Business Ethics, 121(4), 577–592.

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  • Devinney, T. M., Auger, P., Eckhardt, G., & Birtchnell, T. (2006). The other CSR: Consumer social responsibility. Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2006, Leeds University Business School working paper no. 15-04. https://ssrn.com/abstract=901863 or https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.901863

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  • Giesler, M., & Veresiu, E. (2014). Creating the responsible consumer: Moralistic governance regimes and consumer subjectivity. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(Oct), 849–867.

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  • Hunt, T. (2018). Why shop ethically. Ethical consumer. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/why-shop-ethically. Retrieved 8 May 2019.

  • Kendall, B. E., Gill, R., & Cheney, G. (2007). Consumer activism and corporate social responsibility: How strong a connection. In: The debate over corporate social responsibility (pp. 241–264). New York: Oxford University Press.

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  • McMurtry, J. (1998). Unequal freedoms: The global market as an ethical system. Toronto: Garamond Press.

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  • Micheletti, M. (2003). Political virtue and shopping: Individuals, consumerism, and collective action. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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  • Quazi, A., Amran, A., & Nejati, M. (2016). Conceptualizing and measuring consumer social responsibility: A neglected aspect of consumer research. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 40(1), 48–56.

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  • Strandvik, T., Rindell, A., & Wilén, K. (2013). Ethical consumers’ brand avoidance. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 22(7), 484–490.

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  • van Den Broek, T., Langley, D., & Hornig, T. (2017). The effect of online protests and firm responses on shareholder and consumer evaluation. Journal of Business Ethics, 146(2), 279–294.

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  • Vitell, S. J. (2015). A case for consumer social responsibility (CnSR): Including a selected review of consumer ethics/social responsibility research. Journal of Business Ethics, 130(4), 767–774.

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  • Vogel, D. J. (2005). Is there a market for virtue? The business case for corporate social responsibility. California Management Review, 47(4), 19–45.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt, Germany

    Eva Maria Katharina Koscher & Lars Schweizer

Authors
  1. Eva Maria Katharina Koscher
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  2. Lars Schweizer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eva Maria Katharina Koscher .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London Metropolitan University, Guildhall Faculty of Business and Law London Metropolitan University, London, UK

    Samuel Idowu

  2. Cologne Business School, Ingolstadt, Germany

    René Schmidpeter

  3. College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Nicholas Capaldi

  4. International Training Centre of the IL, International Labor Organization, Turin, Italy

    Liangrong Zu

  5. Department of Economics, Society and Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy

    Mara Del Baldo

  6. Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Guarda, Portugal

    Rute Abreu

Section Editor information

  1. School of Energy Systems, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lappeenranta, Finland

    Mirja Mikkilä

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Koscher, E.M.K., Schweizer, L. (2020). Consumer Social Responsibility (CnSR). In: Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_202-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_202-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Business and ManagementReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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