Partisan Political Bias Drives Consumer Evaluations of Non-Political Corporate Social Responsibility

The present research observes a partisan political bias in consumers’ evaluations of firms’ non-political corporate social responsibility (CSR). When consumers believe their own political views are misaligned (vs. aligned) with a firm’s views, they judge that firm’s non-political CSR (e.g., donations to a children’s hospital) as less valuable for its recipients. This partisan devaluation bias violates the economic principle of monetary fungibility and weakens CSR’s ability to improve consumers’ brand attitudes. The bias emerges spontaneously based on consumers’ prior knowledge or inferences about firms’ political views and can create a spillover effect reducing consumers’ willingness to contribute to the cause themselves. We also demonstrate one route whereby consumers justify devaluing politically misaligned (vs. aligned) companies’ CSR: derogating the sincerity of those firms’ CSR. Consequently, when companies signal sincerity in their CSR, politically misaligned consumers ascribe more value to the CSR and express more willingness to contribute to the cause themselves.