기업의 ESG 활동이 기업 신뢰 및 평판에 미치는 영향

Abstract

Recently, climate change and environmental problems have various effects on corporate activities, and are causing great changes in management activities. As a result, companies present the topic of ESG management and are interested in three key elements for sustainable management activities: environment (E), social (S), and governance (G). Therefore, this study aims to comprehensively examine the influence relationship between ESG activities and consumer responses. In other words, it is intended to verify the psychological mechanism by which consumers perceive environmental value, consumption value, and ethical value in the process of inducing trust and reputation in a company, and to explore regulatory factors that influence consumer response by conducting ESG activities. As a result of mechanism analysis, it was found that environmental (E) activities had a positive effect on environmental value, social (S) activities had a positive effect on social value, and governance (G) had a positive effect on ethical value. Environmental value, social value, and ethical value were all found to have a positive effect on the formation of corporate trust, and environmental value, social value, and ethical value were also found to have a significant effect on the formation of corporate reputation. In addition, this research model was regarded as a proposed model, and a total of five alternative models were presented and verified based on this. Through model comparison, it was derived that the structural relationship between a company's ESG activities, consumer perceived value, and consumer response is most appropriate as a proposal model. As a result of the moderating effect analysis, a significant moderating effect was found when groups were divided according to the consistency of environmental and social activities performed by companies and input as a moderating variable between corporate ESG activities and corporate trust. In other words, when environmental and social activities are operated unevenly, social activities have a significant effect on corporate trust, and when environmental and social activities are operated in a balanced manner, cultivation structure has a significant effect on corporate trust. This study has practical implications in that it presented measurement tools for ESG activities and empirically presented the relationship between ESG activities and corporate trust and reputation. In addition, it contributes to academic value by presenting psychological mechanisms such as environmental value, consumption value, and ethical value in the path relationship between ESG activities and corporate trust and reputation. It also implicated practical values by suggesting that there is a need to consider the balance between each element in the process of conducting ESG activities.