Moderator role of corporate social responsibility communication on the relationship of skepticism and moral legitimacy

The aim of this study is to explain the relationship between moral legitimacy judgments of people's characteristic skepticism towards CSR in case of the mediating effects of attributed motivations and credibility; and to reveal whether Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication which is a public relations tool serving moral legitimacy moderates these mediation effects through the relationship between skeptisicm and motivation. Attributed motivations are discussed in 4 dimensions (selfish, stakeholder, value, strategic), and CSR communication factors in 3 dimensions (informativeness, personal relevance and factual message tone). In the research, a CSR communication sample was presented to the respondents by hiding the brand name. CSR communication factors were evaluated through this example. In the study, the data obtained from a sample of 378 people in total were analyzed with SPSS Process macro and Hayes model 83. According to the results, it was seen that the mediation of reliability, stakeholder and value motivations were significant, while selfish and strategic motivations were not significant mediators and it was observed that the regulatory effects of CSR communication factors were significant only in models with stakeholder motivations, but this regulatory effect was not in the expected direction in the hypotheses