On dissemination mechanism of corporate social responsibility (CSR): Analysis with agent simulation

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), such as pro-environmental behaviour and fair trade, is a kind of normative behaviour by private companies to provide a quasi-public good. We study dissemination mechanism of CSR with a multi-agent model in which corporation agents and consumer agents interact with each other. We show that the mechanism to disseminate CSR is a positive feedback between the corporations’ popularity seeking behaviour and the consumers’ social learning in which CSR-seeking preference is evaluated according to both the local average of the preferences of surrounding consumers and the global average of the investment in CSR by all corporations. We also discuss an institutional design to establish CSR from an objectionable social state.