Corporate social responsibility in Malaysia housing developments house-buyers' perspectives

In recent decades, public awareness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) continues to increase. Today's consumers expect businesses to go beyond their profit agenda, and be socially responsible. The focus of this paper is the house-buyers' perspective of socially responsible housing developments in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. The study was designed to complement and triangulate the findings of developers' perspectives on CSR presented at the PRRES Conference in 2008. In this current paper, a qualitative approach, by way of house-buyer focus-group, was used to uncover house-buyers' criteria of basic housing development, levels of satisfaction with their current place of stay, their expectations on developers' social responsibilities, and factors influencing their purchase decisions. Research result showed that most housebuyers expect a socially responsible developer to provide more CSR features in their housing projects regardless of the type of property developed.