Personal traits and customer responses to CSR perceptions in the banking sector

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the moderating role of six personal traits in a causal model to study how customers’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) influence their affective and behavioural responses to companies. Design/methodology/approach A structural equation model is tested in a sample of 1,124 banking service customers in Spain. Based on this model, a multisampling analysis is implemented to determine how gender, age, educational level, CSR support, collectivism and novelty seeking moderate customer responses to CSR perceptions. Findings The findings show that customer responses to CSR perceptions are consistently moderated by gender, age and CSR support. Men, people aged over 45 and highly supportive customers respond to CSR perceptions more positively than women, younger people and customers exhibiting a low level of CSR support. The findings concerning educational level and novelty seeking are less conclusive. Collectivism does not influence customer responses to CSR perceptions to any significant extent. Thus, the findings suggest that gender, age and CSR support are the most useful variables to segment the market to adapt CSR and communication strategies. Originality/value Previous literature has mostly focussed on identifying the personal traits that differentiate socially oriented customers from others. Thus, this paper contributes to previous literature by exploring the role customers’ personal traits play in the identification of differences in customers’ responses to their perceptions of the CSR implemented by companies that sell traditional services, such as banking services.