When Family Firm Reputation Backfires: The Role of Controllability in Consumer Responses to Negative CSR Incidents

We apply attribution theory to examine how family ownership status shapes consumer attitudes toward companies after negative corporate social responsibility incidents, focusing on incident controllability. Two longitudinal experiments reveal that, when controllability is unknown , consumers infer lower controllability for family firms and thus hold more favorable attitudes toward them than non-family firms. However, when controllability is known , low-controllability incidents lead to similar attitudes across firm types, whereas high-controllability incidents reverse the effect, resulting in more negative attitudes toward family firms than non-family firms. These findings challenge the prevailing assumption that family firms consistently benefit from their reputation and inform stakeholder communication strategies.