How to Manage Diversity-Related Corporate Social Advocacy Issues: The Effects of Social Identity Priming and Message Type

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of priming social identity (cosmopolitan vs. parochial) within the context of diversity-related corporate social advocacy (CSA) on organization-public relationships (OPRs) and the intention to participate. It also explored whether the individual’s dispositional factor of social identity complexity (SIC), or the type of message that accompanies the priming strategy, moderates these effects. To test the hypotheses, a 2 (identity priming: parochial vs. cosmopolitan) × 2 (message type: abstract vs. concrete) experiment was conducted with 585 American participants. Results indicated that priming cosmopolitan identity (as compared to parochial identity) positively influenced both OPRs and participation intention. Although SIC did not moderate these relationships, message type demonstrated a moderating effect on participation intention, but not on OPRs. Specifically, participants showed greater intention to participate in the cosmopolitan identity (vs. parochial identity) priming strategy when the CSA message was presented concretely.