Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility Practice on Social Media Crises in Travel Industry | Research Grants Council | UGC/FDS24/B05/18

"Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility Practice on Social Media Crises in Travel Industry", UGC/FDS24/B05/18 from Research Grants Council (HK).

Companies are facing crisis everyday unlike before. One could post his or her opinions and reports the news on social media like Facebook. Some posts are incomplete and not entirely true. It affects seriously on corporate reputation, especially companies using online as one of media for sales and advertising. Travel industry is one of the industries using online heavily in their daily operation.

How to protect corporate image in today digital world is a big challenge for almost every chief executive officer. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) seems to be one of the obvious solutions since it could enhance corporate image in long term. However, CSR has to be used with care in order not to be seemed as window dressing. In this study, the timing of using CSR is studied.

Underlying motive of doing CSR is an important strategic business decision. The fitness between CSR practice with travel agency company's business operation will be examined. Killing the rumor is the key job on crisis management. Corporate clarification is probably not to be welcome by netizen because of its self- serving purpose. Third party could be one of the favorable endorsers in the role of clarification process. Possible creditable sources like a scholar, a regulator, a key opinion leader and a netizen will be compared.