A cross-disciplinary review of crisis spillover research: Spillover types, risk factors, and response strategies

Abstract

The spillover effect of crises has become an emerging research topic in the field of crisis communication, however to our knowledge a cross-disciplinary review of the literature on the topic has not been conducted yet. Also, the complexities associated with crisis spillover and their management call for a synthesis of existing findings which can provide future research directions. This review focuses on empirical studies about crisis spillover and incorporates articles from different disciplines examining this topic. We identified 56 articles about crisis spillover that were published in 35 different journals between 1985 and 2021, and examined the conceptualization of crisis spillover across disciplines, crisis types, industries, stakeholder groups, spillover types, risk factors, and response strategies discussed in these articles. Our suggestions for future research based on the literature review will help guide researchers to explore areas that will help us gain a better understanding of the spillover effect phenomena, and how organizations can respond to spillover crises.