CSR COMMUNICATION OF OIL AND GAS COMPANIES ON SOCIAL
MEDIA:
A Content Analysis of the CSR Communication of Oil and Gas Companies and the
Likelihood of Consumer Skepticism on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube
Master Thesis
Name: Maria Ogloblina - 12026581
Supervisor: Dr. Pytrik Schafraad
Master’s Programme Communication Science
Corporate Communication Track
Abstract
Oil and gas companies suffer from the negative perception of corporate social responsibilityб causing increased skepticism among stakeholders. Nevertheless, they continue involvement in socially sustainable activities and participate in projects related to the development of society and environmental protection, making those activities an integral part of corporate
communication. The landscape of corporate communication has undergone significant changes with the development of technology, choosing now mainly social media as a source of
communication. The current research is focused on CSR communication of oil and gas
companies in social media. The aim of our research was to examine whether the communication channel, topic of the message or format of the message influence the level of consumer
skepticism. To detect which of these factors increase the likelihood of skepticism content analysis was conducted. We examined 165 social media posts of Shell, BP, and Total on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, and 3300 comments. The results showed that the type of social media platform and the format of CSR messages are significant predictors in the level of consumers’ skepticism. Namely, the video message format and the social media platform YouTube cause less skepticism among consumers. The findings further did not provide any significant results in the establishment of the relationship between the topic of the message and the level of skepticism. The implications of the results and limitations of the research are discussed, approaches for future research are suggested.
Introduction
Corporate social responsibility is becoming an important issue within the domains of corporate communication today. The companies nowadays are imposed obligations not only of a financial or legal nature but also a certain social responsibility is expected by society(Waddock, 2004). Nevertheless, companies are actively involved in social activities, engaging social development projects, recognizing the positive outcomes of CSR activities both for society and corporations (Godfrey, 2005). CSR activities provide companies with the opportunity to
influence their own reputation, avoid crises and increase customer loyalty thus occupying one of the central places of corporate communication (Go & Bortee, 2017). Society benefits from CSR activities of the companies in terms of human rights, environmental protection and work with stakeholders. The features of CSR communications vary depending on several factors. One of these factors is a membership in a particular economic sphere, which is considered to be controversial due to a social, environmental, or ethical negative contribution to society. In our research, we will investigate the features of corporate social responsibility communication carried out on social media platforms by the companies in a controversial sector of the economy. Oil and gas companies were chosen as the subject of our study. Due to numerous scandals, criticisms and environmental disasters, stakeholders formed a dual perception of these companies, which rightfully allows to call them controversial (Frynas & Wood, 2001).
It is generally accepted in society that oil and gas companies harm the environment through their activities, thus their CSR activities are ostracized, causing greenwashing
accusations and disputes(Lindorff, Jonson & McGuire, 2012 ). Consumers form ambivalence affecting the decline in the company's reputation and image and also increase the level of skepticism while regarding CSR. The proliferation of unreasonable ethical requirements and the "greenwashing" led to an increase in consumer skepticism (Jahdi, 2009).
According to Bae (2018), skepticism can discredit the company inquiring whether companies sincerely try to serve society or aimed to benefit their own needs. In this way, there are extrinsic and intrinsic motives for corporate social responsibility. These motives are directly related to skepticism among stakeholders - extrinsic motives are perceived as more skeptical (Webb & Mohr, 1998). Skepticism is inevitable while dealing with oil and gas companies and
the main task of CSR communication is to reduce the level of skepticism among the audience (Du, Bhattacharya & Sen 2010).
With the development of Web 2.0 and the emergence of social media, companies have received a new channel for their corporate communications. Social media have forced businesses to be frank with their customers, adjusting communication to the new conditions of transparency, openness, public discussion and instant two-way communication (Pavitt, 2012). For companies of controversial specifics, this served as an undoubted advantage, since according to Du et al. (2010) independent communication channels provoke less skepticism. On the other hand, stakeholders were given the opportunity to express their opinion on the company's CSR
activities, participate in discussions with like-minded people and be heard by company leaders, what made the organizations not to ignore the accusations of “greenwashing”, but to adapt the communication to the new media conditions. Social media created an interactive communication environment, providing stakeholders with an opportunity to influence the company's image formation (Chen, 2009; Fieseler & Fleck, 2013).
In the modern information space, the diversity of social media is wide and provides a variety of formats of broadcasted content. The presence of content in various formats provides a different level of interactivity of social media, and accordingly a different level of responses to CSR communication (Sundar, 2000). For our research three types of social media were chosen - YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, as they feature multi-format content.
Despite the widespread skepticism regarding CSR activities of oil and gas companies, research on the expression of consumer skepticism in social media is missing. The goal of our research is to fill the gap between the communication channel, the topic and the format of the message, and the level of consumer skepticism. The research question is as follows:
How does the level of consumer skepticism vary depending on the social media platform, and CSR fit of oil and gas companies?
The question is scientifically relevant since past studies have stressed the importance of consistency between the intentions of organizations and the perception of CSR messages (Go et al., 2017). However, only little is known about how stakeholders perceive CSR information from oil and gas companies on social media, taking into account the content and format of the
message and the type of social media. In practice, the results can help practicing communication managers to build an effective social media campaign reducing the level of consumer skepticism. Therefore this study fills a gap in the existing CSR literature.
Further, we will describe in detail the theoretical background, where the content and format of CSR messages, as well as the communication channel in connection with the level of skepticism, will be discussed. We will also review the main concepts of CSR communication, CSR fit, CSR motives, social media and content perception. To conclude the thesis the
discussion of the results as well as practical implication and approaches for the future research will be presented.
Theoretical background and hypotheses development
In this part of our research the theoretical background, as well as the basic concepts will be discussed. Based on the literature, hypotheses will be proposed that will help answer the research question.
CSR communication in oil and gas companies
Modern oil and gas companies do not operate in a social vacuum, recognizing the importance of corporate social responsibility. Generally, CSR can be defined as “a voluntary corporate commitment to exceeding the explicit and implicit obligations imposed on a company by society’s expectations of conventional corporate behavior” (Falck & Heblich, 2007, p. 247). Being under the scrutiny of the public, CSR activities of such companies are considered solely as a window-dressing for justifying malicious activities (Spence, 2010). However, the company's CSR activities benefit in improved corporate reputation and legitimacy achieving (Podnar & Golob, 2007; Carroll & Shabana, 2010).
The work of oil and gas companies is complicated by public condemnation, but
nevertheless, the demand for their products is growing in the world. This is a logical response to the lack of governmental regulations of this sector of the economy in conjunction with the deteriorating environment. However, the development of transparent and long-term CSR
programs will enable interaction between business and consumers. Oil and gas companies were chosen as the subject of our research due to the emerging interest whether any involvement in CSR activities is negatively perceived from stakeholders’ point of view.
Communication science divides CSR activities in terms of dimensions (Carroll
1979,1991; Chowdhury, Choi, Ennis & Chung 2018), CSR fit (Drazin & de Ven 1985; Bloom, Hoeffler, Keller & Meza, 2006;) type of claims (Darley & Smith, 1993) and motives (Du et al., 2010; Ellen, Webb & Mohr, 2006). In our research, we will examine both the aggregate as well as the stand-alone effect of these factors on consumer skepticism. It should be noted that these concepts are closely interrelated and partially involve each other.
Skepticism
According to Du et al. (2010) CSR communication has two objectives - to raise the awareness of stakeholders in terms of CSR activities of the company and reduce skepticism among stakeholders in relation to social activities. In our study, we are interested in skepticism, since this phenomenon is directly related to the perception of corporate communication and the company's image. Solving the challenge to reduce consumers’ skepticism towards CSR
communication allows determining the extent to which consumers are ready to reward(support) or punish(refuse to use the company's products and boycott it) the companies basing on the level of social responsibility (Creyer & Ross, 1997). In this way, a direct positive relationship between the level of consumer skepticism and stakeholders attitudes was established.
The company's reputation, crises, motives, channels of communication, the sector of the economy in which the company operates, and even personal qualities of stakeholders influence the emergence of skepticism among the audience in relation to the company's CSR activities. According to Obermiller and Spangenberg (1998) skepticism reflects "the tendency to disbelieve the informational claims of advertising" (p.160). A person may be skeptical about the CSR motives, the veracity of the broadcast information, the appropriateness of the message for a specific audience or specific products (Boush, Friestad & Roseet al., 1994 ). Skepticism has negative attributional outcomes for the companies: weak resistance to the negative information about the company, spread of the negative WOM (word of mouth) and reduction of purchase intentions.
Researchers identify two types of skepticism: pre-dispositional skepticism and situational skepticism (Forehand & Grier, 2003). Pre-dispositional skepticism is skepticism that stands out on an individual level and is viewed as a character trait. This kind of skepticism is characterized
by a distrust of any kind of marketing activity, regardless of context (Obermiller, Spangenberg & MacLachlan, 2005). Situational skepticism is a temporary phenomenon that is considered in connection with marketing, advertising or communication activity and has a target to influence consumers (Vanhamme & Grobben, 2009; Mohr, Eroǧlu & Ellen, 1998). In this study, we will consider situational skepticism, since we are interested in the research of the communicational impact of companies on the perception of stakeholders.
Skepticism is associated with the company's CSR motives. When consumers recognize extrinsic motives ascribed to the company, they are skeptical about company motives or the sincerity of these motives for launching CSR activities (Elving, 2013). According to Pracejus, Olsen & Brownet (2003), consumers affected by situational skepticism, have more knowledge about methods of persuasive influence, have larger data on company activities, respectively, they more clearly grasp the difference between CSR motives of companies. Instead of blindly
accepting corporate CSR statements, consumers often interpret these company messages as insincere and motivated (Connors, Anderson-MacDonald & Thomsonet, 2017). Companies belonging to the controversial sector of the economy and having a contradictory reputation, such as companies in the oil and gas sector, are more often the subjects for stakeholders' skepticism, based on opinions about corporate hypocrisy (Skarmeas and Leonidou, 2013).
CSR dimensions.
In order to consider the CSR dimensions, we preferred to dwell on Carroll's CSR pyramid (1979; 1991). According to Carroll, the dimensions are the "expectations that society has of organizations at a given point of time" (Carroll, 1979; Carroll, 1991). Carroll divides the entire field of corporate responsibility into four dimensions economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic calling it a pyramid according to the level of responsibility that a company has to society. At the base of the pyramid is economic responsibility as it is a fundamental requirement for the
business. This is followed by legal responsibility, which determines the legal work in society. Any business is expected to work within the framework of ethical standards, which is the third brick in the dimensions pyramid. The philanthropic dimension crowns the pyramid, as according to Carroll (1979) philanthropy is what society desires to get from the business, but does not expect it.
This model was chosen for our study due to the fact that we consider this pyramid as a kind of infrastructure that most precisely delineates the nature of responsibility imposed by society. We believe that the described above hierarchy is relevant for our research as it reflects the actual spread of stakeholder skepticism in congruence with corporate responsibilities.
Basing on the discussed above literature on CSR dimensions we hypothesize the following:
H1a: CSR messages based on the ethical dimension (society serving motives) will cause more skepticism than CSR messages based on the legal and economic dimension (company serving motives)
H1b: CSR messages based on the philanthropic dimension (society serving motives) will cause more skepticism than CSR messages based on the legal and economic dimension (company serving motives)
H1c: Message based on the philanthropic dimension will cause more skepticism than messages based on the ethical dimension
CSR motives.
In the above-mentioned hypotheses, we introduced the concept of CSR motives.
CSR motives influence the perception of companies’ conducted social activity. Motives can be conditionally divided into intrinsic, so-called society-serving motives, and extrinsic - company - serving motives. According to Du et al., (2010), extrinsic motives are aimed to increase the company's profit or achieve legitimacy, while intrinsic are regarded as a
manifestation of genuine care and perceived more positively by the society. The influence of CSR activity is increased when the company's motives for CSR are perceived as society-serving. While consumers perceive CSR motives as society-serving, this results in positive purchase intentions, enhanced reputation and increased value of the company decreasing the level of skepticism( Forehand et al., 2003). Accordingly, perceiving CSR motives as company-serving, CSR negatively affects "the perception of authenticity, purchase intentions and loyalty to the company"(Alhouti, Johnson & Holloway, 2016). Also, intrinsic CSR motives have a positive effect on the reputation of the company, since stakeholders trust the social charity of the company (Park, Lee & Kim, 2016).
However, according to Forehand and Greir (2003) stakeholders tend to negatively
perceive not only explicit motives but in general, negatively perceive any marketing activity that seems to them to be manipulative or deceptive. By focusing their CSR communication on extrinsic motives, companies thereby distrust their social activities, boosting the spread of skepticism among consumers. According to Porter and Kramer (2006) the distrust and the level of skepticism can be reduced only by combining both types of motives in the CSR
communication, emphasizing that CSR will be useful both for the company and for society. We adhere to the arguments of Du et al. (2010) declaring negative perception of the company-serving motives. Oil and gas companies are facing greenwashing charges due to bad reputations, its CSR activities are initially perceived poorly. However, according to Chowdry et al. (2018) economic and legal activities are not perceived as value-destructive for oil and gas companies. Thus, the stakeholders do not regard the messages of economic or legal dimensions as negatively, suggesting that they tend to communicate exclusively about the benefits (Ellen et al., 2006). Consequently, we believe that for this kind of companies, skepticism will be higher while communicating society - serving motives. The hypotheses aimed to establish the level of skepticism in accordance with the CSR fit will be presented in the section below.
CSR fit
The concept of social responsibility has gone beyond environmental sustainability and has included issues not only related to the environment. A variety of topics that can encompass social responsibility has led to the term CSR fit. According to Drazin and de Ven (1985) CSR fit is the correspondence between some factors, such as a product, brand, a field of activity, image, target audience, and positioning. Accordingly, CSR fit refers to the relevance of social activity and company profile.
CSR fit affects the perception of the company both positively and negatively. First, the magnitude of consumers' thoughts depends on the degree of conformity between the economic segment of the company and the chosen social strategy. Stakeholders expect that companies will support and sponsor only those social problems that are logically related to the company's core business (Cone, 2007; Haley, 1996). As a result, the fit of corporate social responsibility
company's image - the company's previous activities within CSR affect reputational risks in the event of a crisis. High CSR fit can create a positive perception of the company, leading to increased profits and improved image of the company. For example, if a company works in the chocolate industry, high CSR fit will be to maintain the working conditions of workers or contribute to the struggle to abolish slavery in the production of their own product (Tony Chocolonely). Low CSR fit leads to a decrease in company valuation, CSR motivation is
perceived negatively, in extreme cases, stakeholders charge the company with the greenwashing accusations (Du et al., 2010). According to Yoo and Lee (2018) the higher the CSR fit the greater is the loyalty and preference of consumers for the company and thus, the consumer is more eagerly will purchase the products of the company with the high CSR fit.
Secondly, consumers often purchase goods or services of companies that are actively involved in CSR measures, thereby increasing their own self-esteem or identifying themselves with the contribution to a particular social problem. Consequently, the higher the CSR fit - the more favorable the assessment of the company's consumers (Kotler & Lee, 2008).
However, another point of view exists, stating that low CSR fit can also be a positive factor in the perception of the company's social responsibility, since stakeholders will perceive it as a more sincere, thus enhancing the effect of CSR activity (Bloom et al., 2006). Since our research is focused on oil and gas companies, the lowest CSR fit for that type of companies is a contribution to improving the environment. Therefore we decided to expand the CSR pyramid proposed by Carroll (1979) and add another dimension - environmental (Chowdhury et al., 2018). Concerning constant accusations of oil and gas companies in greenwashing and mistrust of stakeholders in relation to their CSR activity, we believe that low CSR fit will be skeptical and will be regarded as corporate hypocrisy (Chowdhury et al., 2018).
Based on the discussed above literature on the CSR fit and CSR motives we propose the following hypothesis:
H2: CSR messages based on the environmental dimension will cause more skepticism than messages based on the company and society serving motives
The success of CSR communication is determined by the factors that are called ‘claims’(van Rekom & Berens, 2008). The degree of factuality with which CSR activity is displayed is the claim that affects the perception of the transmitted CSR messages.
The factuality of the CSR messages is regarded with respect to the content. According to Holbrook (1978) define two types of claims that determine the factuality of messages - factual and impressionistic claims. The content of the messages in the framework of factual opposed to the impressionistic claims was also revealed as affecting the perception of the message in terms of credibility and emerging skepticism (Darley et al., 1993; Debevec, Meyers & Chan, 1985; Holbrook, 1978). According to van Rekom and Berens (2008) vague words, lack of evidence may be the reason why people are skeptical about CSR communication. Factual claims are claims that "include specific data that can be measured on a standard scale that is not subject to individual interpretation." Impressionistic claims can be defined as claims using "descriptions that are subject to individual interpretation"(van Rekom et al., 2008). Providing factual information in their CSR communication, companies are increasing the level of credibility towards CSR messages reducing the skepticism among stakeholders. With that said we can hypothesize the following:
H3: Factual CSR messages will cause less skepticism than impressionistic CSR messages Perception of the content
The development of the Internet has led to a dramatic change from text format to photo and video content. This change has led to an intensive study of the effect of multimedia updates on the cognitive abilities of consumers.
A study on Instagram's cognitive capabilities revealed that a photo sharing platform where participants and companies publish short videos and share graphic content (photo) is a pleasant and stimulating way to increase consumer interest (Lenhart, Duggan, Perrin, Stepler, Rainie & Parkeret, 2015). In addition, multimedia content takes precedence over textual content (Sundar, 2000). People remember and realize much less, if the information is presented in the photo or video format, compared with text messages(Sundar, 2000). It proves that visual (photo) and audiovisual presentations (videos) have a cognitive advantage over textual representations. It should be noted, that video is a format that combines two modalities - audio and visual.
According to Sundar (2000), providing information in two modalities increases the positive perception of content by the audience.
Accordingly, the level of skepticism to the information presented in the video format will be lower among stakeholders. This allows us to derive the following hypothesis:
H4: CSR messages in the video formats are perceived as less skeptically by the stakeholders than textual and photo posts
Social media platforms
The communication channel plays a significant role in the perception of the CSR
campaign. Stakeholders tend to express less confidence in official communication channels that are controlled by companies and, accordingly, the information broadcasted there passes through the prism of corporate profitability and is highly controlled by the companies (Du et al., 2010). There is a certain correlation between the controllability and reliability of the source of
communication in the CSR sphere: the higher the controllability, the lower the reliability of the source, respectively, the level of skepticism among consumers also increases (Du et al., 2010). According to Wiener, LaForge and Goolsby (1990), the attitude to the message is more critical and negative if the source is perceived as biased. Independent communication channels that provide objective assessments of corporate activities are perceived by consumers more positively and loyally than corporate sources (Yoon, Gürhan-Canli & Schwarz, 2006).
With the development of Web 2.0 and the emergence of social media, stakeholders prefer to obtain the necessary information, as well as to communicate not only at the individual level but also at the human-corporation level through various types of social platforms. Social media have all the necessary advantages for the transmission of corporate communications: they are independent in nature, they have a high level of interactivity, social media have a high level of credibility, besides, modern social media allow companies to broadcast its communication in all possible formats (Chu & Choi, 2011). In addition, social media allow a fast spread of electronic word-of-mouth, which increases the credibility of the CSR messages, as the information received from the friends is perceived more trustworthy and credible(Chu & Kim, 2011).
Social media make it possible to solve one of the aims of CSR communication -
expenses(Qualman, 2013). According to Phua, Jin, and Kim (2017) social media users have various motivations that influence their usage of the specific social platform. Mentioned researched is based on the users and gratification theory (Katz, 1974), which states that users meet their informational, social and entertainment needs in accordance with the chosen social platform. According to Rubin(1986) when choosing a medium (social media platform), users interpret and integrate the information obtained into everyday life, reaching the maximum level of satisfaction of needs. Thus, CSR communication transmitted through social media will be integrated into the daily activity of stakeholders, reducing skepticism and creating a sense of self-identification with the company's activities.
According to the findings by Phua et al. (2017) users of Facebook and Instagram showed higher affection while demonstrating sociability, improving social knowledge and sharing and discussing problems. However, according to Khan (2017) YouTube shows strongest commenting behavior in terms of social interactions among users compared to various social media platforms. Smith, Fischer, & Yongjian (2012) also emphasize that YouTube provides marketers with more opportunities to spread a positive opinion about companies, promote social media campaigns and rely on higher customers’ feedback. Considering the arguments about the affordances of
Youtube, we hypothesized that YouTube will cause less skepticism among stakeholders.
Based on the former research on the credibility of various types of social media and user' behavior we hypothesize the following:
H5: Youtube will be the social platform to cause less skepticism among consumers than Facebook and Instagram
Method
In order to analyze which CSR messages transmitted through social media cause more skepticism among stakeholders in regards to dimension, CSR fit, CSR motives, CSR claims, the format of the content and social media platform the content analysis was chosen. Content analysis is considered appropriate for this study, as it provides applicable research technique for the objective, systematic and quantitative description of the CSR messages of oil and gas companies transmitted through social media(Berelson, 1952). The content analysis will identify and count the frequency of the examined characteristics of the social media posts and comments
and through this, the wider social significance of these texts will be established (Hansen, Cottle, Newbold & Negrine, 1998). The selection of N = 165 posts and N = 3300 comments on social media was made, implying that the coding of one post would take 15 minutes and 2-3 minutes to code a comment, which leads to approximately 151 hours of coding. This sample was analyzed by one coder. The inter-coder reliability was tested on 330 comments and 17 posts, which is 10% of the total sample. For data analysis and hypotheses testing IBM SPSS was used.
Data collection
In terms of the data collection, official accounts of the three largest oil and gas companies in Europe were investigated, namely Shell, BP, and Total. The following social networks were selected - Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
Sample
We were using the combination of two sampling methods: multi-stage cluster sampling to collect the posts as this method is suitable for a widely dispersed sample to intend to gather a representative sample of posts(Bryman, 2016) and convenience sampling to collect the comments relevant to our research. For our sampling frame, we chose 100 largest companies according to Forbes Global 2000 ranking in 2018 since the latest ranking of the publicly held companies in the world is relevant for our study. By applying the differential instrument provided on the website the sorting function was conducted, which allowed us to divide companies by the sphere of the activity. We applied the following sampling procedure: at first, we applied the "oil and gas" condition and selected companies belonging to that sector. Second, we applied a regional criterion and excluded companies based outside of Europe. Afterwards, we picked out the most profitable companies and chose the five largest companies. Since the sample units of our research were the comments and posts on social media, we checked that the opted companies owned at least one official social media account. Content broadcasted by the companies should have been mainly in English thus, two companies were excluded from our sample - Equinor and Eni. The final sampling frame consisted of 3 largest European oil and gas companies - Shell, Total and BP.
Then we proceeded with the posts and comments selection. We selected 20 posts on Facebook, 20 posts on Instagram and 15 videos on YouTube per company. For each post and video, we selected the first 20 comments, respectively. Comments that were considered replies to the other consumers' replies were not included in the analysis. When choosing units for our analysis, we applied the language parameter: we selected posts and comments only in English. Overall the N= 165 posts and N=3300 comments were collected.
The regional criterion was applied to our sample due to the fact that we will be able to generalize the results of our research to the European population, eliminating the deviations caused by cultural and economic differences. The criterion of profitability was applied to our sample basing on the assumption that companies occupying the leading positions in the market are an example to imitate for the rest of the industry.
Operationalization Basic information
Each post and comment were coded for basic information. This included the type of content and the specification of social media platform. For the type of the messages we used three formats - video, photo, and text and for the type of social media, we investigated Youtube, Facebook and Instagram. Then we computed the scales for each of the five dimensions of the posts - economic, legal, ethical, philanthropic and environmental - using latent concepts. Each comment was coded in order to define positive or negative framing. To fulfill the analysis we extracted the general score of a positive and negative(skeptical) set of comments for each post respectively and computed new scale. The new scale ranged from 0 to 20 with the score 0 - meaning no skepticism and 20 - highly skeptical. The scale was ranging from 0 to 20, since for each post a set of 20 comments was compiled, and each comment was analyzed based on two categories - positive or negative (skeptical), overall 20 was the highest possible value. The same procedure was conducted for positive comments, new scale received meanings 0 - not positive and 20 - highly positive comments. New scales were called ‘negative comments’ and ‘positive comments’ respectively. As the category of comments framing is mutually exclusive, each comment could only be included in one category.
The concepts positive (N=1582) and negative framing (N=1718) of the comments as well as factual (N=73) and impressionistic claims (N=92) of the posts were measured in two
categories - absence or presence. Economical dimension
To measure the latent concept ‘economical dimension’ six sub-concepts were introduced. The new variable ‘economic dimension’ was coded (α=.67) if the market, profit, finance,
economics, business, and collaboration were mentioned. The reliability of the concept is acceptable for this particular research accordingly we retained all 6 items in order to preserve collected information.
Legal dimension
In order to measure the ‘legal dimension’ five latent concepts were introduced. The new variable ‘legal dimension’ was coded (α=.62) for the presence of the law, regulation, legal, government, and rule mentioning. All five items were retained because they measure in detail the concept of ‘legal dimension’ and we didn’t prefer to exclude the gained information by deleting one item. Thus the reliability α=.62 is acceptable for this particular research.
Ethical dimension
If the posts mentioned ethics, moral, justice, society and behavior the ‘ethical dimension’ was coded (α=.84). The reliability scale is high.
Philanthropic dimension
‘Philanthropic dimension’(α=.70) was coded for the presence in the CSR posts of the oil and gas companies such concepts as activity, charity, philanthropy, and community. Considering the score of the reliability scale (α=.70) we conclude that it is high.
Ecological dimension
‘Ecological dimension’(α=.76) was coded for the presence of the concepts nature, green, ecology, pollution, and climate. The reliability score is high for the purposes of our research.
Company and society serving motives.
The aforementioned concepts were mentioned in terms of absence or presence. We marked the posts reflecting the company serving motives in case the dimensions of the posts
were legal or economic. In case the dimensions of the posts were ethical or philanthropic we marked the post as reflecting the society serving motives.
Inter-Coder Reliability
To measure the reliability of the codebook the inter-coder reliability test was conducted. Using Krippendorff’s Alpha (Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007), 10% of the sample was coded by two coders. Going through a coder training procedure where the main variables were discussed and the coding instructions were given 330 comments and 17 posts were coded.
Administrative variables of our research such as ‘name of the company’(α=1.00), social media platform (α=1.00), type of the content (α=1.00) showed maximum inter-coder reliability. The variables aimed to define the dimensions of the CSR messages showed high reliability tests with ‘profit’(α=.72), ‘market’(α=69), ‘finance’(α=83), ‘economics’(α=.76), ‘business’(α=.67), ‘legal’(α=.67), ‘rule’(α=.83), ‘government’(α=.69), ‘ethics’(α=.76), ‘society’(α=.75),
‘behavior’(α=.74), ‘donation(α=.81)’, ‘charity’(α=.68), ‘community’(α=.79), ‘ecology’(α=.80), ‘climate’(α=.68), ‘pollution’(α=.77), ‘nature’(α=.73)
Variables ‘collaboration’(α=.26), ‘regulation’(α=.19), ‘justice’(α=.49),
‘philanthropy’(α=.38), ‘law’(α=.52), ‘green’(α=.14) and ‘moral’(α=.36) showed relatively low reliability. However, they were not excluded from the analysis as we assume that the rarity of the categories was the reason for low reliability. Variable ‘activity’ also showed a low score (α=.06) and after the discussion, it was recoded into ‘action’ to ease the coding procedure and meet the requirements of coding agreements for the future analysis.
Variables that were aimed to measure the factual (α=.89) or impressionistic claims (α=.91) of the posts showed very high reliability scores as the variable aimed to measure the extrinsic (α=.92) and intrinsic motives (α=.74) of the CSR posts.
Apart from the aforementioned variables aimed to measure CSR messages of oil and gas companies, variables of ‘positive’(α=.57) and ‘negative’(α=.24) comments required
reconsideration and clearer instructions after the first inter-coder reliability testing. The second inter-coder reliability test on the improved codebook was held consisting of 330 comments and 17 posts on social media. The new reliability score for variables ‘collaboration’(α=.69),
‘moral’(α=.63), ‘positive’(α=.76) and ‘negative’(α=.83) were received. For further analysis, the new reliable variables were used to proceed with the further coding procedure of the comments.
Analysis
In order to answer the research question and test our hypotheses, several independent sample t-tests and one-way ANOVA tests were conducted. To test the hypotheses 1a, 1b, 2, 4 and 5 we applied one-way ANOVA test. Using computed scales for each dimension we coded a new variable including solely economic, legal and ethical dimensions scores for hypothesis 1a and the economic, legal and philanthropic dimensions for hypothesis 1b. We were using the variable ‘negative comments’ as dependent continuous variable. To test the second hypothesis we computed new variable including the values for environmental dimension, society, and company serving motives and used it as an independent variable. As a dependent variable, we picked the variable ‘negative comments’. To test the hypothesis 5 we applied the variable ‘social media platform’(V2) as an independent variable on the categorical level and ‘positive comments’ as the dependent variable. For the fourth hypothesis, the variable ‘type of the content’ was used as an independent variable on the categorical level and the variable ‘positive comments’ was used as a dependent variable.
Independent samples t-tests were conducted to test the hypothesis 1c and the third hypothesis. To test the hypothesis 1c the new variable including the values for the philanthropic and ethical dimensions was computed. Variable ‘negative comments’ was used as a dependent variable. Providing that the variables ‘factual claims’ and ‘impressionistic claims’ are mutually exclusive we included the variable ‘factual claims’ in the analysis and recoded it to test the fourth hypothesis. After the recoding the new variable received the meanings ‘factual’ and ‘impressionistic’. We used the variable ‘positive comments’ as the dependent variable for the third hypothesis.
Results
To test the hypothesis 1a one-way ANOVA test was conducted to test if the ethical (M=12.06, SD=16.7) dimension causes more skepticism than legal (M=13.31, SD=23.06) and economic (M=19.82, SD=30,67) dimensions among the users of social media. It should be noted that the assumption of equal variances in the population has been violated, Levene's F(2, 94) =
3.31, p = .041. Results of the analysis showed that the model was not significant F(2,94)=.97, p=.39 and no difference was found in the scores for groups of ethical, legal and economic dimensions in the relation with the negative comments. Thus hypothesis 1a is rejected.
Comparing whether or not the philanthropic dimension (M=15.19, SD=22.7) would cause more skepticism than economic (M=19.82, SD=30,67) or legal dimension (M=13.31, SD=23.06) (H1b) one-way ANOVA test was conducted. The Levene’s test for the equality of variances between the groups was proved to be significant p=.187, therefore equal variances between the three groups is assumed. No statistically significant results were retrieved comparing the scores of philanthropic, legal and economic dimensions, F(2.94)=.55 p=.58. Therefore hypothesis 1b is not supported.
To test whether philanthropic dimension (M=15.19, SD=22.7) would cause more skepticism than ethical dimension (M=12.06, SD=16.7) independent samples t-test was
conducted. According to the Levene's test, the variances between the two groups are equal p=.34. Statistical testing of the hypothesis indicated there is no significant difference between the
groups t(62)= -,63, p=.53, 95% CI[-6.83,13.08], d=0.15. Therefore hypothesis 1c was not statistically supported, p=.53.
In order to measure where environmental dimension (M=15.93, SD=29.48) would cause more skepticism comparing it to a company (M=16.62, SD=27.18) and society serving motives (M=13.63, SD=19.83) one-way ANOVA test was conducted. Based on the Levene's test of homogeneity of variances, the variances between the groups are equal p=.081. No statistically significant difference was revealed in the scores of the concepts F(2.162)=.52, p=.59. Therefore the second hypothesis was rejected.
To test the third hypothesis independent samples t-test was conducted. CSR messages containing factual claims (M=12.67, SD=18.8) were compared to the messages comparing impressionistic claims (M=18.51, SD=28.94) in terms of skeptical comments. It should be noted that the assumption of equal variances in the population has been violated p<.001. Disproving the third hypothesis no significant results were found t(163)=1.49 p=.14 95% CI[-13.57,1.89], d=0.15.
Comparing whether the format of the CSR messages had an influence on the level of consumers’ skepticism one-way ANOVA test was conducted. Results reveal that posts in the video format (M=41.54, SD=32.6) arouse less skeptical comments and score higher on the level of positive comments than messages in photo (M=12.73, SD=4.39) and text format (M=6.54, SD=4.72); the significant strong effect of the posts’ type was revealed F(2.164)=37.38, p<0.001.ƞ2=.32. Thereby the fourth hypothesis is confirmed. However, while conducting Bonferroni post-hoc test video posts showed a significant difference when compared to photo and text posts, no significant difference is found when compared photo and textual formats of the CSR posts as shown in table 1.
Table 1
Results of one-way analysis of variance
Pair Mean Difference SE Mean p 95%CI Video - Photo Video - Text Photo - Text 28.81 35.03 6.19 4.39 4.14 3.73 .000 .000 .30 [18.29,39.33] [24.99,45.02] [-2.83,15.22] N=165
In order to test the fifth hypothesis and check if the social media platform influence the increase of consumers’ skepticism another one-way ANOVA was conducted. The results revealed that Youtube (M=30.38, SD=37.22) caused less skepticism among stakeholders comparing to Facebook (M=5.47, SD=4.22). Instagram as a social media platform to be the reason for the skepticism scored in between (M=11.92, SD=4.83). The analysis of variance showed significant medium effect size of the type of the social media platform on the
consumers’ skepticism F(2,164) = 17.65, p> .001, ƞ2 = .14. A Bonferroni post-hoc test revealed the only significant difference was found between Youtube and Facebook posts in the level of skepticism and Youtube and Instagram posts. No significant difference between Facebook and Instagram posts was found as shown in table 2. Therefore hypothesis 5 is confirmed.
Table 2
Results of one-way analysis of variance
Pair Mean Difference SE Mean p 95%CI Youtube - Facebook Youtube - Instagram Instagram-Facebook 24.92 18.47 6.45 4.49 4.15 3.73 .000 .000 .46 [14.06, 35.77] [8.42, 28.52] [-4.41,17.31] N=165
Discussion
The aim of the present study was to analyze whether CSR messages of oil and gas
companies transmitted through various social media arouse the skepticism among stakeholders in terms of CSR dimensions, formats of the messages and the types of social media. The results presented in the previous section demonstrated that neither CSR fit of the messages nor CSR motives as well as the factual nature of the provided information can be considered as reliable factors determining the level of skepticism among stakeholders. However, observations
concerning the variability of social media and the typology of the content demonstrated that the type of content, as well as the type of social media platform, can determine the level of
consumers’ skepticism.
The first hypotheses were aimed to identify which of the given CSR dimensions - ethical, philanthropic, legal and economic would cause more skepticism among stakeholders. Applying Carroll’s CSR pyramid we aimed to investigate the most skeptically perceived CSR dimension. Results didn’t support the assumptions showing any difference between ethical, philanthropic, legal and economic dimensions. This goes in line with Carroll’s observation (1991) that the dimensions are not mutually exclusive, i.e. companies can combine various dimensions types in their CSR strategy thus eroding stakeholders perception of the whole
communication. Moreover, Carroll assumes (1991) that in practice the use of this pyramid would be most effective only with a combination of all dimensions in the communication campaign.
Given that the dimensions are the expectations that stakeholders have of the companies (Carroll, 1979), it is natural to presume that companies use several dimensions in creating their corporate communications within CSR, which explains the lack of confirmation of our hypotheses. Thus our hypothesis was not confirmed due to the methodological reason. We assume that the application of this pyramid to the research should be complex to analyze the whole CSR campaign of the company, i.e. it is impossible to apply this pyramid in separate dimensions.
In contrast to the expectations, the hypothesis aimed to research CSR fit of oil and gas companies was not confirmed as well. This goes in line with Bloom’s et al. (2006) reasoning stating that under certain circumstances like previous crises or bad reputation stakeholders may shift their perception of the low CSR fit of communication, coordination with the low CSR fit might differentiate the company as more sincere. On the other hand side according to Du et al.,(2018) companies should emphasize the alignment of their social initiatives with their business activities thus practicing only high-fit social responsibilities. We believe that our hypothesis was not confirmed due to the fact that the context and the cases of our research differ from what the theory comes from. Probably, in the case of oil and gas companies, the framework of CSR fit should be supplemented, considering the economic specifics of the oil and gas sector. The apparent discrepancy and lack of consensus in the theory about the use of CSR fit and the motives of CSR practices in terms of preventing skepticism is the result of this hypothesis being disproved.
There also seems to be no difference between the usage of factual and impressionistic claims in regards to the consumers’ skepticism. Hypothesizing that factual claims are causing less skepticism than impressionistic we based our assumption on the research by Berens and van Rekom (2008) who stated that advertising messages containing more precise information about social and environmental input of the Chevron company were perceived more favorably than messages that just mentioned the social commitment of the company. Since our research was conducted on the companies based on the territory of Europe, we assume that the gap in the cultural background between two types of companies caused the difference in the results. Besides the perception of the factual information is also influenced by the positive image of the considered companies (Davis, 1994). Since the companies, that we included in our research,
belong to a controversial sector of the economy and are initially evaluated as negative by consumers, we assume that the aforementioned reasons caused the skew of the results.
Nevertheless, when analyzing hypotheses concerning social media our hypothesis was confirmed and we proved that messages in video formats are perceived less skeptically than photo or textual posts. When looking at the format of social media posts in connection with the level of skepticism we found a difference between video, photo and textual formats. In
accordance with Sundar's research (2000), we obtained a similar result confirming that video is perceived more positively, comparing to photo and textual messages. The video combines audio and visual range (two modalities), causing especially powerful psychological signals, allowing to increase the memorization of the information received and reducing the level of criticality among the audience (McLuhan, 1964). Our study confirmed the theory that text and photo messages are based on the lower level of cognitive perception than messages in video format due to the combination of several modalities (Lenhart et al., 2015; Sundar, 2000; Marmolin, 1991).
In congruence with the confirmed hypothesis of the positive perception of video messages, we obtained results confirming the hypothesis about the preference of YouTube as compared to Facebook and Instagram. As confirmed by the user-gratification theory, people are using various types of social media to satisfy their leisure and informational needs and receive satisfaction (Blumler & Katz, 1974). Indeed, with the development of modern technology, it was very important for the business to reconcile the broadcast communication in accordance with the changes that the audience has undergone. (Phua et al.,2017). The level of trust that social media have gained has defined further relationships on the human-corporation level (Chu et al., 2011). According to Smith et al. (2012), YouTube provides the best opportunity for companies to establish a positive relationship on the human-corporation level, thereby YouTube is most
preferred by consumers compared to Facebook and Instagram. Respectively, Youtube causes less skepticism among consumers confirming our hypothesis.
Thus, answering a research question, we can determine that the factors determining the level of skepticism among stakeholders for oil and gas companies are the communication channel and the format of the selected message, while the content of these messages is not
significant. This conclusion provides us the opportunity to formulate the practical implications of this research, as well as to identify the limitations and possible further research.
Practical implications
This research gives us an overview of the usage of the various types of CSR
communication in social media by the companies of a controversial sector of the economy. Results and discussion can be used by external communication specialists, as well as practicing SMM managers in order to build effective corporate communication with stakeholders. The study showed that the most effective CSR communication takes place when the message is transmitted in a video format. As the most effective source of information that causes the least level of skepticism among the users of social media Youtube is proved to be most preferred. Hereby communication specialists become aware of the adjustment of the CSR campaigns in accordance with the more reliable social media (Yoon et al., 2006).
Notwithstanding the study has shown that the CSR motives(Du et al., 2010), as well as the factualism (Holbrook, 1978) and the dimensions of CSR messages (Carroll, 1979; Carroll, 1991), don’t have any impact in general on how skeptical are stakeholders to the corporate social responsibility of the oil and gas companies. Thus, we reveal that the content of the message does not play a significant role in the perception of information. In contrast to the aforementioned factors, the type of the social media platform and format of posts were found to be significant while determining the level of skepticism. This will allow to more accurately form effective CSR strategies, as well as perform actions aimed to improve the company's image optimizing the target budget of the companies.
Limitations
This study has a number of limitations which should be regarded for the investigation of the research question. At first, in terms of data collection, our analysis was based on the posts and comments in the social media platforms. Due to the fact that these data are controlled by certain organizations, we do not exclude the possibility of moderating comments and posts by the owners of corporate profiles. Inasmuch as the growing dissatisfaction with the activities of oil and gas companies within the framework of sustainability the aforementioned companies may get rid of data threatening the image of the company by deleting or making the commenting
procedure impossible. Therefore, the replication of this study might be impaired on account of the unavailability of data.
Secondly, the chosen sampling method has several drawbacks. All along of the time limitations, we applied convenience sampling for our research which can not be representative of the entire population. Thus, our results cannot be extrapolated on the entire population. Given limitation stipulates the difference between the results from the sample and the theory what elucidates the skewness of the results (Bryman, 2016).
Third, the data we studied was exclusively in English. We do not exclude the possibility of changing the results of research with the inclusion of more international data.
The above-mentioned methods allow us to identify the gaps in our research that may bias construct validity and generalizability of the results.
Future research
The present study has not proven that CSR dimensions are significant factors in the level of skeptical response towards corporate communication of oil and gas companies. For the future research, it would be interesting to investigate if the results remain the same including into the analysis companies from different sectors.
Research results demonstrated us the overview of the activities of the big oil and gas companies. Future research should be focused on comparing the communication activities of both large and small companies belonging to the same sector.
Finally, the expansion of the cultural spectrum could be of interest for further research. Since only European companies were included in our study, consideration of communication strategies of Asian, Arab, American and Russian companies in comparison with each other can reveal interesting results and contribute to the future development of communication science.
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Appendix. Codebook
CodebookInstructions to the codebook
This codebook consists of three parts. The first part (part A) is named ‘Administrative variables’. The coder fills in the name of the company, the source of the message (social media platform), the type of the content( video, text or photo) and the type of the item( comment or post). If the analyzed item is a post on a social media(V4), the coder goes to part B of the codebook. If the analyzed item is a comment the coder goes to part C of the codebook, skipping part B.
The second part (part B) is named ‘CSR message. Content of the post. CSR dimensions, motives and claims ’. This part is dedicated to analyse the posts extracted from the social media. If the variable V4(Item) was marked as ‘company post’ the coder should proceed with part B skipping part C. The coder analyzes social media posts and decides if it belongs to one of the fifth CSR dimensions, if the message contains factual or impressionistic information and if the motives are extrinsic or intrinsic. In this study, we make use of the items to determine belonging to a particular dimension. The items are used to measure CSR dimensions. The coder fills in weather the message contains one of the listed items. In case none of the listed items is present in the post, the coder must rely on the definition of the dimension when determining where they belong to.
The third part (part C) is named ‘Skepticism and the Semantics framing of the
comments’. In this part the coder analyzes the comments retrieved from the social media. The coder should proceed to this part of the codebook, skipping part B of the codebook, if in the variable V4(Item) the answer was ‘comment’. Item should be analyzed in accordance with the definition provided for each variable. We have also provided some examples of words and phrases that will make it easier for the coder to determine the magnitude of the framing.
A: Administrative variables V1: Name of the company o Shell
