Making Information on CSR Scores Salient: A Randomized Field Experiment
| Author | Pasquale Scaramozzino,Francesco Salustri,Leonardo Becchetti |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12301 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
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©2019 The Department of Economics, University of Oxford and JohnWiley & Sons Ltd.
OXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICSAND STATISTICS, 81, 6 (2019) 0305–9049
doi: 10.1111/obes.12301
Making Information on CSR Scores Salient: A
Randomized Field Experiment*
Leonardo Becchetti†Francesco Salustri†,‡ and Pasquale
Scaramozzino†,§
†Dept. of Economics and Finance, University of Rome Tor Vergata, via Columbia,
2 – 00133 Rome, Italy (e-mail: becchetti@economia.uniroma2.it.)
‡Health Economics Research Centre, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University
of Oxford, Oxford, OX3 7LF, UK (e-mail: francesco.salustri@ndph.ox.ac.uk.)
§School of Finance and Management, SOAS University of London, London, WC1H 0XG,
UK (e-mail: ps6@soas.ac.uk.)
Abstract
We locate a giant ‘school report-like’ scorecard poster with domain-specific social and
environmental responsibility scores of the ten leading world food companies, measured by
the Oxfam ‘Behind the Brands’ world campaign, at the entrance of selected supermarkets.
We test the impact of these scores on consumers’choices by means of a randomized field
experiment. Our findings show that the Oxfam ranking matters since the treatment has a
positive and significant effect on the market share of the companies with the highest scores
and a negativeand significant effect on the companies placed at the lowest ranks. Invisibility
matters too, with the largest non-ranked companies selling in the store experiencing a slight
fall in their market shares.
I. Introduction
A large and consolidated body of theoretical and empirical research in the behavioural
literature postulates or documents the existence of ‘pure or impure’ other-regarding
JEL Classification numbers: D12 (Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis); C93 (Field Experiments); M14
(Corporate culture, Social responsibility).
*Wethank Andrea Attar,Marco Battaglini, Sergio Beraldo, Francesco Bogliacino, Mark Brockway,Eloisa Campi-
oni, Phani Chintakayala, Giacomo Corneo, Luisa Corrado, Alessio D’Amato, Filippo Maria D’Arcangelo, Maurizio
Fiaschetti, Werner G ¨uth, Yasmeen Khwaja, Luca Lambertini, Enrique Lluch Frechina, Victor Murinde, Christine
Oughton, Arsen Palestini,Tommaso Proietti, Tommaso Reggiani, Fran¸cois Salanie, WilliamYoung, and Mariangela
Zoli for their helpful suggestions and all other participants to the 2015 seminar held at the University of Berlin, the
2015 Luiss laboratory seminar in Rome, the 2016 Wilfredo Pareto Workshop at Collegio Carlo Alberto-University
of Turin, the 2016Villa Mondragone Economic Conference, the 2016 SIE Annual Conference in Milan, the 2016
RES-PhD Meeting in London, the 2017 DeFiMS seminar at SOAS Universityof London, the 2017 Behavioral and
Experimental Economics Workshopat Luiss in Rome, the 2017 IEA World Congress in Mexico City, the 2017 SIEP
Conference in Catania, the 2018 EPCS Conference in Rome, and the 2018 CRR Conference in Leeds for useful
comments and suggestions received. We are also thankful to the editor James Fenske and two anonymous referees
for their constructive comments that improved the quality of the paper.We thank Unicoop Firenze for the precious
and indispensable assistance in arranging our experiment and the Oxfam Italia staff for their valuable support and
comments. The usual disclaimer applies.
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preferences. Most of this literature relies on laboratory experiments which show that indi-
viduals, beyond their self-interested defined desire to increase their monetary endowments
and consumption levels, are also driven, among others, by other-regarding preferences
(Cox, 2004), positive and negative reciprocity (Rabin, 1993), social welfare preferences
(Charness and Rabin, 2002), inequity aversion (Fehrand Schmidt, 1999; Bolton and Ocken-
fels, 2000), and different forms of pure and impure (warm glow) altruism (Andreoni, 1989,
1990), which could arise from a mix of unconditional and conditional drivers including
social approval (Konow, 2010).
In parallel, several theoretical and empirical contributions have investigated the novel
and growing phenomenon of corporate social responsibility (CSR).1Most of these em-
pirical studies focus on the relationship between CSR and corporate performance, while
theoretical research investigates the impact of CSR on the traditional welfare goals of
standard theoretical models (Baron, 2003; Besley and Ghatak, 2007; B´enabou and Tirole,
2010). This literature shows that, in a framework of asymmetric information, signalling
a CSR stance has a positive effect on sales not only because of (unconditional or social
context dependent) other-regarding preferences, but also because CSR is perceived as a
signal of product quality (see among others, Siegel and Vitaliano, 2007; Elfenbein and
McManus, 2010).
The noveltyof the present paper lies in the establishment of a nexus between behavioural
economics and CSR, by means of a randomized field experiment in which a ‘school report-
like’poster scorecard with detailed scores in different CSR subjects for the ten largest world
food companies is located at the entrance of selected supermarkets. This means, we cannot
interpret our findings just in terms of a simple brand salience effect. Instead, we are able
to test the impact of CSR information on consumer choices thereby reducing problems
of observational equivalence. The information provided to customers when they enter the
supermarkets is retrieved from the international Oxfam Behind the Brands campaign. The
campaign providesa scorecard with summar y scores on corporate social and environmental
responsibility on seven CSR domains (Transparency, Women, Workers, Farmers, Land,
Water, and Climate), for each of the ten leading world food and beverage corporations.
The scores are created by aggregating a large number of indicators with a methodology
described in detail in the campaign website (see section II below).2For each company,
the sum of the seven CSR scores gives a summary measure that determines its ranking.
The scores can be found online on the campaign website where, by clicking on icons
of the typical brands of the ten companies, web surfers can access their detailed scores and
are invited to send a message of approval/disapproval to the companies.
1Two institutional definitions of CSR come from the European Commission and the World Bank.According to the
first (EC, 2001), companies are socially responsible when they ‘integrate social and environmentalconcerns in their
business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis’.The World Bank agrees with
the definition of the WorldBusiness Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD, 2002), according to which CSR
is ‘the commitment of business to contribute to sustainable economic development, working with employees, their
families, the local community and society at large to improve quality of life, in waysthat are both good for business
and good for development’. For literature reviews on CSR see, among others, Kitzmueller and Shimshack (2012),
Hoi, Wu and Zhang (2013) and Dhaliwalet al. (2012).
2Information on the campaign as well as details on its methodology are available at http://www.behind
thebrands.org/images/media/Download-files/BtB%20Methodology%20document_final_Sept%202014.pdf.
©2019 The Department of Economics, University of Oxford and JohnWiley & Sons Ltd
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