Corporate Social Responsibility in the Agri-Food Sector: Evidence from Greece

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can benefit business directly, such as by improving the working environment and increasing productivity, and indirectly, such as by increasing customers’ interest and sales. The focus of this article lies on the investigation of CSR in the Greek agri-food companies through two perspectives, namely the business and the consumer perspective. The business perspective is based on the investigation of CSR activities promoted on the corporate websites of 222 food companies, SMEs and large sized. The consumer perspective is based on a questionnaire analysis of 200 participants, investigating their willingness to purchase products from companies practicing CSR activities. The results of this research showed that CSR activities are rather low in Greece and only few agri-food companies’ have a clear and sound strategy to promote such actions. It seems that, during the economic crisis, most companies, especially SMEs, do not invest in such activities, but their main concern is survival, which -given the economic environment- is challenging. In addition, companies mainly support social activities, give less support to environmental activities, and even less support to human resource activities. Although most consumers seem to be socially aware of the CSR actions performed by the agri-food companies and have a sense of responsibility themselves, a significant part still is unaware of such actions.