Designing Effective Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility Messages: Communication Strategies in the Automotive Industry

As more companies invest in environmental corporate social responsibility (CSR), increasing attention has been given to how to effectively communicate their environmental CSR efforts. However, limited research has focused on how to enhance message credibility and brand attitude through environmental CSR communication. To fill this gap, this study investigates how the use of gain-loss message framing and the presence or absence of third-party environmental certification can affect perceived message credibility and brand attitude in automotive environmental CSR messages. The automotive industry was chosen because environmental CSR is especially important in this sector. Additionally, this study examines whether perceived message credibility serves as a mediator between gain-loss message framing, third-party environmental certification, and brand attitude. This study used a quantitative online experimental survey, collecting data from 200 participants to test the hypotheses and answer the research question. The findings show that only gain-framed environmental CSR messages can result in a more positive brand attitude, while message framing did not affect perceived message credibility. Additionally, the presence of third-party environmental certification did not lead to changes in perceived message credibility or brand attitude. Although message credibility did not mediate the effect of gain-loss message framing and third-party environmental certification on brand attitude, it was found that message credibility can positively affect brand attitude. The findings of this study confirmed the positive effect of gain-framed messages in environmental CSR communication. Future studies can further explore the effects of gain-loss message framing on different variables. Regarding the non-significant effect of third-party environmental certification, the issue may be that this study only focused on the visual presentation of the certification logo. Future research could test whether the results change when additional explanatory context about the third-party environmental certification is provided.