1. Introduction
Currently, many business firms operate corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and initiatives to exhibit their responsibility to society and their stakeholders. This is because the business sector has been facing social and political pressures against its practices that potentially cause social and environmental impacts such as climate change, environmental degradation, resource depletion, public health problems, and social inequalities [
1,
2,
3]. According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development [
4], CSR is defined as “the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large” [
5]. The practice of CSR activities offers several forms of advantages to business firms, including economic benefits [
6]. For instance, Dilling [
7] explained that CSR operations could enhance a firm’s financial performance. By operating CSR activities, business firms will try to satisfy stakeholders’ needs and care more about society. As a result, those business firms can gain reputation, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction, which could help improve financial performance. Many firms employ resources and make investments in CSR initiatives with the goal of creating value for themselves, the environment, and society [
6,
8]. Brammer et al. [
9] revealed that organizations that have positive images and a reputation for caring for social causes can attract more potential employees than those that lack these attributes. Many business leaders have also perceived that business firms with a good record of caring about social causes have a favorable reputation among their stakeholders, such as employees, customers, and consumers. In Thailand, CSR practices are mandatory for publicly listed companies, which must report their sustainability or CSR activities in an annual performance report to the Securities and Exchange Commission [
10]. The report must include disclosure of companies’ environmental, social, and corporate governance information.
In practicing CSR, business enterprises can create several types of activities, and several public issues can be addressed to attract public attention. Many business enterprises integrate their CSR initiatives into their core business activities by targeting them to benefit their internal stakeholders, such as customers, consumers, employees, investors, and stockholders. Many organizations focus on addressing social and environmental issues. According to Levy and Park [
11], CSR involves an organization’s efforts to improve or enhance the quality of life of its internal stakeholders, such as its employees and their families and affected communities, enhance business–community relations, and address diverse social and environmental issues (such as recruiting members of minority groups as employees, participating in charity activities, producing green products, reducing waste, and recycling).
Many CSR strategies developed by business enterprises are concerned about critical environmental issues. Smith [
12] found that concern for the environment due to intensive business development began in the 18th century, as many development activities caused serious environmental degradation such as natural resource depletion, climate change, and environmental contamination. Currently, many business organizations are still integrating a critical environmental issue into their CSR strategies because critical environmental problems still exist and environmental issues could also attract public attention. As stated by Levy and Park [
11] and Turker [
13], the growing public awareness of climate change and the significant adverse impact of human activities on the natural environment led many business enterprises to create their CSR activities based on a critical environmental problem. In addition, many business organizations are aware that their business activities could generate some negative impacts on society and the natural environment; thus, it is important for them to develop CSR strategies that aim to protect and conserve the environment [
13].
In Thailand, the Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Company Limited (CPF), one of the major publicly listed companies in Thailand, also realizes the importance of developing an environmental conservation project as a CSR activity. Since 2014, CPF, in cooperation with government agencies, academic institutions, and local communities, has initiated mangrove forest conservation and restoration projects called the Grow-Share-Protect Mangrove Forestation (GSPMF) in several areas in Thailand [
14]. The project aims to restore mangrove forests and related ecological systems, and expects residents living nearby mangrove forests to sustainably utilize mangrove resources both directly and indirectly for their lives and livelihoods while taking part in mangrove protection and conservation. Ecotourism in communities near the mangrove forest is also promoted under the GSPMF. Community residents are greatly encouraged by CPF to participate in all activities of the project, including mangrove restoration and conservation as well as the community’s ecotourism development. Participation in all activities involves planning, implementing, and monitoring the project. Community residents’ benefits from participation in the project are also given importance by the company.
CPF recognizes the importance of active public participation in CSR projects and has endeavored to promote active and long-term participation of community members in the GSPMF. This is because the active participation of community members can create a community’s sense of ownership of the project, which, in turn, contributes to community members’ efforts to complete the goals of the project by sharing their resources or capabilities. In this way, the CPF can minimize investing resources in the project while the community can take part in the development of the project based on local communities’ desires and help maintain the project. As stated by Njoroge et al. [
15], business enterprises should utilize their resources in a manner that would be beneficial to both the owner and society as a whole. Many scholars have also addressed the diverse benefits of active participation of community members in CSR projects [
16,
17,
18,
19,
20]. For instance, Leach et al. [
16] and Sen et al. [
17] indicated that the public views and judges business organizations based on their apparent social traits and motives, and from those perceptions, it constructs opinions about the organizations’ capability to contribute to communities. Community participation in CSR projects allows the community to perceive the social traits of a business enterprise, which consequently leads to a social license to operate. Owen and Kemp [
21] added that community participation is an essential tool for a business firm to receive a social license to operate in the mining sector. Though CPF has been promoting the participation of community members in the GSPMF, community members still hesitate to fully participate in all project development processes. Therefore, mangrove forest restoration and conservation in some areas are not successful.
To encourage the participation of business enterprises’ stakeholders in a CSR project, it is important to consider both business enterprise-related factors and participant-related factors. Enterprise-related factors include organizations–public relationships (OPR) and a business enterprise’s CSR credibility [
22]. OPR refers to the mutual relationship between one organization and its public, and the quality of the relationship can be assessed based on levels of trust and mutual influence between one another [
23]. A high-quality relationship between a business firm and community residents can influence community residents’ decisions to participate in CSR. CSR credibility refers to one’s feeling of confidence and trust in an organization’s ability to fulfill its claims [
24]. Community residents who perceive the credibility of CSR are likely to participate in the project. The participant-related factors include participants’ ability to participate in the CSR project [
25], perceived values of the CSR project [
26], and participants’ expected economic and non-economic benefits from participation [
27]. For instance, Mohr et al. [
26] found that people who recognize the contribution of CSR to society are more active in purchasing the products of enterprises, which potentially positively influence society. Moral people tend to be aware of the perceived social and environmental values of CSR and to make decisions to engage in CSR projects. In the case of having a natural conservation project as a CSR, Raposo et al. [
25] found that a lack of relevant knowledge and capability can have a negative impact on the willingness to participate in water conservation. Chen and Liu [
28] concluded that it is difficult for citizens who have insufficient ecological knowledge to respond to ecological conservation. Thus, they are likely to hesitate to participate in CSR projects. Finally, the decision to engage in CSR might be based on how participants perceive the benefits of their participation. Different people can have different expectations, which can be both expectations of economic benefits (e.g., increased incomes and wages) and expectations of non-economic benefits (e.g., happiness, social networks, improved community environments), and these expectations could lead to motivation to participate in the CSR project.
This study focuses on community members’ participation in an environmental CSR project, mangrove forest management, which included restoration and conservation. This type of project requires community members’ participation in several stages, including planning, implementing, and monitoring, and each stage entails different efforts and capabilities of community members. Therefore, the potential factors that may influence residents’ participation in each stage would be different. This study aims to investigate determinants of community participation in each stage of mangrove forest management, which included a restoration and conservation project—the GSPMF Project in Rayong province—which was initiated by CPF. We examined business enterprise-related factors and participant-related factors for their power to predict community members’ participation in planning, implementing, and monitoring the project. Our findings provide implications for development strategies to effectively promote community members’ active participation in each stage of CSR project development.
3. Theoretical Framework and Hypotheses
This study aims to examine how business enterprise-related factors and participant-related factors could predict community members’ participation in the GSPMF environmental CSR project. In this study, participation in the environmental CSR project is defined as the dependent variable, and it could be divided into three stages. The first stage is participation in planning the GSPMF environmental CSR project, which will be investigated by exploring whether community members shared their desires and relevant information in planning the project and have taken part in the decision-making process for developing activities and relevant strategies. The second stage is participation in implementing the GSPMF environmental CSR project. To measure community participation at this stage, this study assesses whether community members participated in implementing a mangrove restoration and conservation program. In this stage, participants can take part in various activities such as planting mangrove trees, preparing planting areas, cleaning mangrove forests, providing plant seeds or young mangrove trees, donating money, or persuading people to participate in the project. The last stage is participation in monitoring the project, which will be evaluated by exploring participants’ engagement in looking after planted mangrove trees, monitoring problems occurring in the project area, and informing responsible organizations about solving occurring problems. The participation of community members in all of these activities was requested by CPF, the initiator of the project.
For potential determinants of community participation in the environmental CSR project, based on reviews of relevant literature, potential factors are divided into two groups (see
Figure 1). The first group is business enterprise-related factors, which included OPR quality [
75,
76] and perceived CSR credibility [
22,
79,
80,
81]. People with a perceived strong OPR quality will tend to accept behaviors, notions, or recommendations from their trusted organization. Many scholars have posited that people’s perception of a strong relationship with a business enterprise may contribute to motivation to participate in that business enterprise’s project [
70,
76]. For CSR credibility, based on the theory of source credibility, people who perceive the corporate credibility of a firm tend to behave in the way that responses to a firm’s expectation [
79,
80,
81] due to confidence in a firm’s capability to complete its goals. Therefore, it is likely that community members with perceived CSR credibility can be more active participants in CSR projects.
In the context of this study, we formulated hypotheses as follows:
Hypothesis 1. OPR quality predicts community members’ participation in each stage of environmental CSR project development (the mangrove forest management project), including the planning, implementing, and monitoring stages.
Hypothesis 2. CSR credibility predicts community members’ participation in each stage of environmental CSR project development (mangrove forest management project), including the planning, implementing, and monitoring stages.
The second group consists of participant-related factors, including perceived values of CSR projects or perceived ecological values [
26,
86], ecological knowledge [
82,
83,
85], and expected benefits from participation, including monetary-related benefits and nonmonetary-related benefits [
90,
91,
92] (see
Figure 1). Many scholars have posited that participants’ perceived CSR values, particularly the value of the CSR program to society and the environment, could lead to motivation to support the CSR program [
26,
86]. In this study, the CSR program is a mangrove forest management project. Therefore, it can be assumed that community members who can perceive ecological values of the mangrove forest project would be likely to participate in the environmental CSR project’s development. For ecological knowledge, participants’ possession of ecological knowledge can imply their capability to take part in an environmental CSR activity [
82,
84]. In this study, the environmental CSR is a mangrove forest management project. Therefore, participants may need to possess a certain degree of ecological knowledge to play roles in diverse mangrove forest management activities, such as practicing conservation or restoration activities or sharing related information in a decision-making process. Insufficient ecological knowledge can cause hesitation among participants to take part in the project [
25,
28,
82]. Furthermore, participants’ expected benefits of participation may also help promote participation in the environmental CSR project. As stated by Hsu and Lin [
93], expected benefits could positively affect individual attitudes and then affect behaviors. In the field of natural resource management, many scholars have posited that community members’ expected benefits, including monetary or nonmonetary-related benefits, could motivate participation in natural resource management [
90,
91,
92]. In this way, it can be assumed that expected monetary and nonmonetary-related benefits could affect community members’ participation in the environmental CSR project. Based on the discussion of participant-related factors, we formulated hypotheses as follows:
Hypothesis 3. Perceived ecological values predict community members’ participation in each stage of environmental CSR project development (the mangrove forest management project), including the planning, implementing, and monitoring stages.
Hypothesis 4. Ecological knowledge predicts community members’ participation in each stage of environmental CSR project development (the mangrove forest management project), including the planning, implementing, and monitoring stages.
Hypothesis 5. The expectation of monetary-related benefits predicts community members’ participation in each stage of environmental CSR project development (the mangrove forest management project), including the planning, implementing, and monitoring stages.
Hypothesis 6. The expectation of nonmonetary-related benefits predicts community members’ participation in each stage of environmental CSR project development (the mangrove forest management project), including the planning, implementing, and monitoring stages.
6. Discussion and Conclusions
This study examined factors contributing to community members’ participation in the GSPMF project, which is an environmental CSR project initiated by CPF. In general, the results revealed that the significant predictors of community members’ participation at each stage of the project were significantly different (see
Table 6). As stated by Mbeche et al. [
60], the participation of local people in forest management may differ across the different stages of the forest management program, including planning, implementation, and monitoring, and significant factors affecting participation in each stage may also differ. Understanding determinants of community participation in each stage of the management program could have implications for the development of communication strategies to encourage the active participation of local community members. Surprisingly, the participants’ perceived ecological values were the strongest predictor of participation in all stages. This implies that local community members will actively participate in all stages of sustainable mangrove forest management if they can perceive the value of mangrove ecosystem services. This finding is in line with Zhang et al.’s [
104] study, which revealed that farmers’ perceived values of farmland significantly affected their participation in ecological environmental protection on farmland. Similarly, Hernes and Metzger [
114] showed that the active participation of stakeholders in biosphere management and conservation activities was significantly affected by stakeholders’ perceived environmental values, such as wildlife values and the beauty of nature. Local community members’ perceived direct and indirect values of mangrove ecosystems could greatly affect their motivation to participate in all stages of management due to the fact that most community members’ livelihoods are related to the utilization of mangrove resources, such as careers related to ecotourism in the area, fisheries, and fishery-related activities. Most importantly, considering that regulating the services of mangrove ecosystems can mitigate possible natural disasters in the area and protect community land, community members who could perceive these types of value could be more motivated to participate in all stages of the management project. Perception of the ecological values of mangrove ecosystems enables community members to recognize how the CSR project has created values for the welfare of society and the environment. Community members could also perceive the social and environmental responsibility of a business firm, which can affect their decision to participate in a CSR project. As indicated by Truong [
115], people’s decision to engage in natural resource management hinges on their desire to preserve the values of ecological systems for future generations, society, and their well-being.
Similar to perceived ecological values, both business enterprise-related factors, including perceived OPR quality and CSR credibility, significantly affected the participation of community members in all stages of the mangrove forest management project. Surprisingly, however, perceived OPR quality significantly and negatively affected participation in all stages of the project. A strong interrelationship between an enterprise and community members could make community members hesitant to participate in all stages of the project. People might have felt confident that CPF would fulfill its roles and behave as promised to the communities. This result contradicts many previous studies that found that mutual trust and a strong relationship between parties could promote active participation in the project [
116,
117,
118,
119]. For instance, Stern and Coleman [
118] and Smith et al. [
119] found that people’s participation in a biosphere reserve management project was significantly influenced by their perceived trust in local authorities, who were mainly responsible for the management. Regarding the variable of perceived CSR credibility, the results revealed that perceived CSR credibility significantly and positively affected community members’ participation in all stages of the mangrove forest management project. This implies that community members’ perceived competence in operating the environmental CSR project and their confidence in the success of the project may motivate active participation from local community members. Therefore, it is important that an enterprise clearly inform community members about concrete objectives, goals, and processes to ensure that the CSR project can be completed. As reported by Josephs and Humphries [
120], people’s clear understanding of management objectives and relevant information would result in confidence in the project and a readiness to act in response to the project.
Considering the participants’ expected benefits, only expected monetary-related benefits had a significant effect on the participation of community members in the planning stage, whereas nonmonetary-related benefits had no significant effect. This implies that community members’ initial decision to take part in the planning stage of the CSR was based on their expectation to improve their economic status by gaining more income and having a stable job. In degraded ecological systems, local people’s jobs related to the utilization of natural resources, such as fisheries and ecotourism-related services, could suffer; thus, people construct their expectations of monetary benefits from the environmental CSR project and decide to first participate in the planning stage. As stated by Satti et al. [
121], economic incentives highly influence community members’ decisions to engage in a natural resource management project because community members always expect to improve their household’s economic situation. Livelihoods of local communities adjacent to natural resource areas are mostly related to natural resource utilization; thus, CSR projects that involve increasing agricultural productivity, maintaining forests, improving access to water for livestock and croplands, and improving soil quality would be very influential in promoting the participation of local communities. Mbeche et al. [
60] also revealed that community members’ expected economic benefits had a positive effect on their engagement in participatory forest management in Kenya.
Concerning community participation in implementing the environmental CSR project, the current study revealed that both expected monetary- and nonmonetary-related benefits had a significant effect on participation. This suggests that to promote participation in the implementation stage, in addition to expected monetary benefits, community members’ perceptions of nonmonetary benefits (such as increased social cohesion, amusement in the participation process, and improved community environmental quality) must be promoted. As stated by Kanel and Dahal [
122], participatory forest management with the active participation of local communities, including the poor and minority groups, can enhance social cohesion and social support due to their social interaction, which in turn increases community security. These perceived values from participation in implementing the environmental CSR project should also be promoted through creative participatory processes, such as community volunteering for mangrove tree planting or community volunteering for ecotourism activities. However, regarding participation in the monitoring process, the current study found that both expected monetary and nonmonetary-related benefits were not significant predictors. It is possible that most monitoring activities were individual-based and required some professional knowledge and skills in detecting and solving problems in the mangrove forest. Although they might have had expectations of receiving benefits, the community members might have excluded themselves from the process due to insufficient capability.
Finally, considering that community members’ possession of ecological knowledge is related to ecological conservation capacity, the results of this study revealed that ecological knowledge was not a significant predictor of participation in both the planning and monitoring stages of the GSPMF project. This contradicts the knowledge deficit model [
108,
123], which assumes that knowledge may lead to attitudes and eventually contribute to behavioral change. Many previous studies have confirmed a direct relationship between ecological knowledge and behavioral intention [
124,
125]. However, Brunk [
126] said that human behavior is complex; thus, knowledge can be limited to predicting changes in human behavior. In this study, ecological knowledge had no power to determine community members’ participation in planning and implementing the environmental CSR project. However, we found that knowledge had a significant effect on participation in the monitoring stage. As discussed above, to participate in monitoring a mangrove forest management project, community members may need some specific knowledge capacity, such as how to identify mangrove tree conditions, suitable conditions for planting and growth, and suitable species. Further, monitoring activities are mostly individual, so they hardly support each other in monitoring activities. Thus, ecological knowledge may play a vital role in promoting community participation in the monitoring stage of mangrove forest management.
In conclusion, the findings of this study provide both theoretical and practical contributions. This study suggests that the determinants of community participation in each stage of mangrove forest management are different due to differences in activities at each stage, which require different levels of effort from the participants. Mbeche et al. [
60] also confirm that the participation of community members in forest management is determined by different significant factors. Participation in monitoring mangrove forest management projects is mostly an individual activity in which people are encouraged to monitor problems in mangrove ecosystems and the progress of mangrove reforestation. These activities require specific knowledge for participation; therefore, the role of ecological knowledge is significant. As indicated by Cebrián-Piqueras et al. [
103], ecological knowledge is positively correlated with people’s perceptions of ecological change and the perceived vulnerability of some water-dependent ecosystems, including mountain lakes and riparian forests. Thus, people with ecological knowledge may be able to detect ecological problems and take action for restoration. However, ecological knowledge cannot predict community participation in planning and implementing the project.
Further, when operating mangrove forest management as an environmental CSR project established by a business enterprise, enterprise-related factors, including OPR quality and perceived CSR credibility, are significant in promoting community participation in all stages of management. Notably, this study found that a higher OPR quality contributes to a lower level of participation by community members due to the community’s reliance on a business enterprise. Therefore, with a high level of OPR quality, a business enterprise should actively communicate with local communities about the significant roles of local communities in promoting the success of the project; otherwise, they would be reluctant to participate. For perceived ecological values, this study found that perceived ecological value is the strongest predictor of community participation at all stages because community members can recognize the contributions of CSR projects to the whole society and environment. Therefore, we recommend that community members be educated on the diverse ecological values of mangrove ecosystems to enhance their participation. To educate community members about diverse ecological services, a mechanism or system for fostering information sharing among community members is recommended. As indicated in the study by Truong, D.D. [
115], most community members perceive ecological values from their daily livelihoods and social networks, whereas a small number of community members perceive ecological values from television, radio, and local media programs.
Finally, for the expected benefits from participation, community members’ decisions to engage in the planning stage are influenced only by expected monetary-related benefits. This is because their current careers and livelihoods might be negatively impacted by degraded mangrove ecosystems; thus, improving mangrove ecosystems may bring economic benefits to their households. Dolisca et al. [
127] also recommended that monetary incentives are important to promote the greater participation of community members in forest management activities. However, for participation in implementing the project, both expected monetary and nonmonetary-related benefits are significant incentives because interactive participatory activities in the implementation stage may create social interactions, which in turn lead to social cohesion and support. When this contribution is perceived by community members, they are likely to participate in implementing the project.
Surprisingly, both expected monetary and nonmonetary-related benefits did not predict community participation in the monitoring stage of this study; however, ecological knowledge significantly affected participation only in monitoring the project. Therefore, we suggest that the enhancement of ecological knowledge (ecological systems, current ecological issues, and conservation actions) may help promote community participation in monitoring CSR projects.