Does Effectiveness Matter? Measuring Consumer Value for Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

Actions and discussions around for-profit corporations’ duty of “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR) have grown exponentially in the last decade. Simultaneously, there has been a growing discourse in the philosophy community around the concept of “effective altruism”: using evidence and data to determine the most effective ways of benefitting others. However, the effective altruism conversation is rather siloed to charitable organizations, while CSR typically relates to corporates and their core business interests. This paper serves to connect these two thought processes. In an experimental model, individuals’ willingness to pay for consumer goods will be measured against two variables: the generosity and the effectiveness of that good/brand’s CSR initiatives to determine if effectiveness, in terms of number of lives saved, has a positive effect on consumers’ willingness to pay.