Understanding worldview beliefs to allay skepticism toward CSR advertising

Understanding consumers’ worldview beliefs can lead to more effective brand communication. Study 1 demonstrates that addressing consumers’ worldview beliefs directly in brand CSR communications can offset the influence of their trait skepticism toward persuasive messages. Study 2 provides evidence that worldview beliefs function independently of trait skepticism in predicting brand attitudes, particularly concerning brand warmth. Worldview beliefs can also account for an apparent relationship between consumers’ skepticism and their attribution of motives to a firm. Thus, the theoretical contribution underscores the importance of understanding consumers’ worldview beliefs as a construct that is distinct from trait skepticism. For managers, the manuscript offers guidance in ways to fend off possible consumer skepticism when crafting environment-related CSR communication. In terms of a methodological contribution, consumers’ attributions of a firm’s motives typically involve measuring a mixture of altruistic and firm-oriented motives, and the attributions can be assessed more precisely by using separate unipolar measures instead of relying on typical bipolar measures.