Consumers' Perceptions and Enactment of Consumer Social Responsibility in a Developing Country Context: Qualitative Insights from Malaysia

This thesis presents the results of a qualitative study of Malaysian consumers’ perceptions and enactment of their social responsibility; that is, their Consumer Social Responsibility, or CnSR. The study found CnSR to be a localised hybrid concept that privileges local/Malaysian (self-protection of subsistence needs along ethnic/religious lines) over Western (ecological, sociological) CSR ideas and practices, and is primarily enacted through culturally-specific forms of inaction. The thesis extends Caruana and Chatzidakis’ (2014) multi-level, multi-agent CnSR framework to a developing country context, and extends the qualitative approach in CSR scholarship, cautioning against the generalisation of ‘universal’ CSR/CnSR theories and concepts.