Corporate-NGO partnerships in the oil and gas industry

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become an indispensable aspect of business operations, particularly within the oil and gas industry, which seeks to enhance its legitimacy through CSR initiatives. Due to the industry’s immense impact on the environment and its rich history of climate denial, CSR has emerged as a crucial component of firms in the industry obtaining a ‘social license to operate’. Particularly popular nowadays are corporate-NGO partnerships, because they offer oil and gas companies greater legitimacy in the eyes of consumers and regulators. This thesis set out to investigate how three aspects of corporate-NGO partnerships interact in order to shape consumer attitudes and negative word-of-mouth. Furthermore, the research examines the mediating role of perceived company motives in these relationships, through the lenses of attribution theory. A 2 (CSR fit: high/low) x 2 (partnership duration: long/short) x 2 (CSR domain: environmental/social) between-subjects experimental design was employed, with a sample of 402 participants recruited via the crowdsourcing platform Prolific. This thesis set out to investigate CSR domain as a separate concept from fit, instead of treating it as a constituent part, similarly to previous literature. It was found that both fit and domain play an important role in how consumers perceive a given CSR initiative and their subsequent negative word-of-mouth intentions. Furthermore, the results indicate that partnership duration significantly influences consumer attitudes toward CSR initiatives. Longer partnerships were found to lead to more favourable consumer attitudes compared to shorter partnerships. The findings of this research support attribution theory, suggesting that consumers' perceptions of company motives mediate the impact of CSR initiatives on their attitudes and NWOM. When consumers perceive the company's motives as intrinsic, their attitudes are more favourable, and their NWOM is minimised, where the opposite effects are observed, when consumers perceive extrinsic motives. These insights underscore the importance of strategic CSR planning in corporate-NGO partnerships, particularly the significance of partnership duration and the careful alignment of CSR fit and domain. This study offers insights for theorists and managers alike for how fit, domain and partnership duration interact in order to shape consumers’ attitudes and behaviours in the oil and gas industry.