Within- and between-person(s) emotional reactions toward crisis communication

Abstract

PurposeThe study sought to explore how people's negative emotions change in a crisis situation when they get to know about the crisis and the corporate's socially responsible activities after crisis.Design/methodology/approachA 2 (crisis type: human error vs organization misdeed) × 2 (CSR fit: low vs high) × 3 (motive disclosure: no disclosure vs company-oriented disclosure vs society-oriented disclosure) between-subjects experiment was conducted online.FindingsMore anger was elicited toward organizational misdeed than human error from both within-person and between-persons perspectives. When using CSR as postcrisis strategy, within-person analyses revealed that high CSR fit in message helped to attenuate sadness (and potentially anger) to a greater extent than low CSR fit, whereas between-persons analyses did not find significant effects of either CSR fit or motive disclosure.Originality/valueOur findings demonstrate that situational dynamics in crisis situation constantly influence people's emotional states, suggesting a vertical investigation (e.g. within-individual analysis) of emotions may help both scholars and practitioners better understand the nature of crisis emotions and provide fresh insights on how to cope with them.