Abstract

Celebrities act as a credible communication source for many marketing and community-related communications. Community commitment for brands has been researched across the countries. Commitment of communities is an important matter for brands to meet desired responses within community-based brand building programs. Community commitment within disaster management is one of the national level priorities in many countries including emerging economies in Asia. Celebrities are used as a credible source to educate and motivate communities to get aware or actively participate in disaster management activities. This paper employed a quantitative survey method aiming the communities who actively engaged with disaster management programs sponsored or endorsed by celebrities in Sri Lanka, a country extendedly applies community-based disaster management strategies. Hypotheses were formed on how celebrity credibility influences brand community commitment to engage with disaster management activities whilst mediating effect of brand community trust is also hypothesized. A size of 230 sample was contacted for the survey. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was executed testing the hypotheses by using AMOS 20 software. Results verified celebrity credibility influences brand community commitment. Analysis proved brand commitment trust acts as a mediator on the effect made by celebrity credibility on brand community commitment within disaster management programs.

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