How Do Media Companies Gain Legitimacy? An Experimental Study on the (Ir)Relevance of CSR Communication

Due to structural changes in the media industry, the topic of CSR has gained more and more attention among media companies. Our research question was whether media companies can gain legitimacy through CSR disclosures. There is reason to assume that CSR disclosures both directly increase and indirectly decrease a media company’s legitimacy. On one hand, CSR is regarded as a means of strengthening legitimacy; on the other hand, stakeholders might become skeptical and distrust disclosures about generous deeds. The experimental study detailed here considers both possibilities by using five CSR disclosures of a fictional media company as the stimuli, ranging from low- to high-communicated CSR engagement (single-factor between-groups design, 274 participants). According to the results of the Structural Equation Model (SEM), both assumptions are incorrect: CSR is not the crucial factor in determining whether or not stakeholders perceive a media company as legitimate, but rather its corporate credibility.