Corporate social responsibility in China's housing market: House-buyers' perspectives

In recent decades, public awareness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) continues to increase. Today's consumers expect businesses to go beyond their profit agenda, and be socially responsible. The focus of this paper is the house-buyers' perspective of socially responsible housing developments in Xuchang, China. In this current paper, a qualitative approach, by way of house-buyer focus-group, was used to uncover house-buyers' criteria of basic housing development and factors influencing their purchase decisions. In this paper the authors intend to analyse the links between CSR and the consumer behaviour through a survey undertaken in a sample of Xuchangese consumers. In order to validate the survey a structured equations model was applied. Research result showed that most house buyers expect a socially responsible developer to provide more CSR features in their housing projects regardless of the type of property developed. The research hypotheses were mostly confirmed except the influence of identity salience in the behavioral aspects of consumers. Research result showed that most participants expected developers to provide more CSR features in their housing projects regardless of the type of property developed.