Strategic International Crisis Communication: The influence of crisis response strategy and language choice in non-profits’ crisis communication responses on Dutch stakeholders’ affective perceptions and behavioural intentions.
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2021-08-24
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en
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In a crisis, it is paramount for organisations to communicate with stakeholders in order to dampen reputation damage. A strategically crafted crisis response can help organisations achieve this goal. The Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) provides a framework for devising such crisis responses. However, prior effect studies which have investigated and applied the SCCT reveal mixed findings in terms of congruence between crisis type and crisis response strategy. Moreover, the role of language choice in crisis response messages in an international context has remained unexamined. To investigate this, this study draws on research on the Foreign Language Effect (FLE) which predicts that people tend to respond more emotionally in their L1 as opposed to their L2. In effect, the present study investigated the influence of crisis response strategy (Diminish vs. Rebuild) and language choice (Dutch vs. English) on Dutch stakeholders’ affective perceptions and behavioural intentions in the context of a fictitious non-profit organisation in an accidental crisis cluster. In an online experiment, 163 Dutch participants filled out a questionnaire measuring six dependent variables in a between-subjects design. Firstly, results reveal a significant main effect of crisis response strategy on emotionality, anger, sympathy, organisational reputation, and willingness to boycott. In an accidental crisis cluster, the alternative crisis response strategy recommended by the SCCT (i.e. Rebuild) consistently led to more favourable outcomes than the preferred crisis response strategy (i.e. Diminish). The congruence between crisis type and crisis response strategy, which is recommended by the SCCT, is thus not corroborated in this study. Secondly, there was no significant effect of language choice on any of the dependent variables. The interaction between crisis response strategy and language choice was not statistically significant either. This suggests that the FLE does not persist in this context of L1 Dutch participants who are relatively proficient in the L2 English.
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