Does CSR Create Value for the Unbanked? Corporate Social Responsibility, Perceived Value, and Financial Inclusion among Low-Income Bank Customers in Africa

ABSTRACT : Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has gained considerable traction in the African banking sector, yet its role in generating consumer perceived value (CPV) among low-income and financially excluded populations remains theoretically underdeveloped and empirically scarce. This paper investigates the mediating role of perceived value in the relationship between CSR and customer loyalty, with particular attention to the low-income segment in Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on a conceptual synthesis of stakeholder theory, the Service-Dominant Logic (SDL), and the multidimensional perceived value model (Sweeney Fandos Roig et al., 2006), we develop a structural theoretical model that articulates how the three dimensions of CSR—social, environmental, and economic—generate distinct dimensions of perceived value (functional, social, emotional, and epistemic), which in turn drive loyalty intention among low-income bank customers. The model is empirically grounded in a quantitative survey of 387 low-income bank clients in the Rabat-Salé-Kénitra (RSK) region of Morocco, analyzed through Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Results reveal that social CSR is the dominant predictor of perceived value for this segment (β = 0.48, p < .001), followed by economic CSR (β = 0.37, p < .001) and environmental CSR (β = 0.19, p < .05). The mediation analysis confirms that perceived value fully mediates the social CSR → loyalty relationship and partially mediates the economic CSR → loyalty path. Environmental CSR shows no significant direct effect on loyalty in the absence of value mediation. These findings challenge the universality of CSR-loyalty models derived from high-income or corporate banking contexts and call for a recalibrated, inclusion-first CSR framework for African banking operators. Managerial and policy implications are discussed for banks in Morocco and across Africa pursuing inclusive growth strategies.