Cause-related marketing in tourism: how goal framing promotes consumer prosocial behaviours

Cause-related marketing is commonly regarded as an effective tool for tourism enterprises to bolster their commitment to sustainable practices, fostering environmental and social responsibility within their operations and offerings. However, despite this, there is limited research into the implementation of cause-related social marketing to achieve the sustainability goals of tourism enterprises. Consequently, this research leverages construal level theory to examine how goal framing in cause-related tourism marketing communications nudges consumers towards engaging in prosocial behaviours, with an explicit emphasis on the boundary conditions in which desired effects diminish. Results across two pilot studies and four scenario-based experiments demonstrate that the specific (vs. abstract) goal framing elicits a higher degree of prosocial behaviours through the critical role of empathy. Two moderating variables demonstrate the enhancement effect of specific goal framing is attenuated for consumers already high (vs. low) on the agreeableness trait and those who are primed with a cyclical (vs. linear) temporal perspective. Additional analyses and controls, including ruling out three alternative explanations, reinforce the reliability and validity of the results. This research provides evidence-based insights critical to amplify the effectiveness of cause-related corporate social responsibility initiatives in tourism, unveiling the specific mechanisms which underpin consumer responses to corporate social responsibility messages and communication framing. Future research should examine the critical role of goal framing in the social repositioning of tourism enterprises.