Corporate Digital Responsibility Communication, Stakeholder Engagement, and Public Trust in AI: The Mediating Roles of Bias Remediation and Organizational Responsiveness

Abstract This study examines how users’ perceptions of two forms of stakeholder engagement in corporate digital responsibility (CDR) communication — dialogic and collaborative — are associated with trust in AI companies through perceived bias remediation and organizational responsiveness. Hypotheses were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling based on a U.S. national survey ( N = 747) conducted in December 2024 via Prolific. Results show that perceived dialogic engagement was positively associated with both perceived organizational responsiveness and perceived bias remediation, which were in turn positively associated with trust. Perceived collaborative engagement was positively associated with perceived bias remediation but not perceived organizational responsiveness. The indirect associations of perceived dialogic engagement with trust through both mediators were significant, whereas perceived collaborative engagement showed a significant indirect association with trust through perceived bias remediation but not perceived organizational responsiveness. Among the control variables, perceived credibility of AI-generated content was positively associated with trust, whereas privacy concerns and a more negatively perceived tone of AI-related media coverage were negatively associated with trust. Findings advance stakeholder engagement theory by demonstrating distinct patterns through which users’ perceptions of dialogic and collaborative engagement are associated with trust in GenAI companies.