ESCP Europe

Langue

English

Publication year

01/03/2026

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is widely recognized for enhancing companies’ reputations. Despite the extensive CSR literature, less attention has been given to how companies’ CSR behaviors influence consumer perceptions during product-harm crises. This study uses event-related potentials to investigate how CSR behaviors shape consumer perceptions when companies adopt different response strategies in the context of a product-harm crisis. Our findings reveal that, regardless of a company’s CSR history, corrective response strategies lead to more positive consumer evaluations than denial ones. Notably, when adopting denial response strategies, companies with prior CSR behaviors will elicit higher consumer evaluations than companies without prior CSR behaviors. Additionally, at the initial stage of a crisis, consumers allocate less attentional resources to evaluate companies with (vs. without) prior CSR, resulting in smaller posterior N200 (N2p) amplitudes. Then, at the stage when companies implement response strategies to address the crisis, denial response strategies induce greater cognitive conflict in consumers, evoking larger anterior N200 (N2a) amplitudes compared to corrective ones. When adopting denial response strategies, companies with prior CSR behaviors will elicit smaller N2a than companies without prior CSR behaviors. These findings contribute to the CSR and crisis management literature and offer practical insights for companies in addressing product-harm crises. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)