The survey of causal relationships between CSR awareness and corporate trustworthiness as well as the other dependent variables (on the example of petroleum companies operating in Georgia)

The objective of current research is to evaluate the impact of petroleum companies? CSR activities on corporate trustworthiness as one of the dimensions of corporate credibility, customer purchase intention, and customer?s willingness to be involved in CSR initiatives in Tbilisi city of Georgia. In order to meet research objective and to test hypotheses generated at the outset of the research project causal research was applied; The experimental design that was used is before-after with control group. The population under study is customers of three petroleum companies out of six operating in the industry because these three companies have been showing commitment to CSR compared to their competitors. Three experiments were carried out using three experimental and three control groups. Each company?s customers were randomly assigned to the experimental and the control groups. For the purpose of data analysis, a statistical package for social science (SPSS) was applied to assess group mean difference and to test research hypotheses at p-value 0.05 significance level. All three experiments revealed that CSR awareness significantly influences both corporate trustworthiness, which is one of the important dimensions of corporate credibility, and customer purchase intention, and ultimately results in more customer willingness to be involved in corporate CSR initiatives while the factor of corporate trustworthiness serves as a mediator between CSR awareness and Purchase Intention.