The impacts of locus of crisis outcome control on responsibility attribution in hindsight: focusing on comparisons between the American and Chinese public

Abstract

Through two equivalent national surveys in the United States (US) and China, this study investigated how people’s forethoughtful assessments of crisis outcomes affect their retrospective responsibility attribution and subsequent demand for regulatory intervention. The results revealed that when Americans and Chinese perceived that they could rely on the government as a proxy agent to achieve desirable crisis outcomes, they attributed more responsibility to the in-crisis company. The increased blame company attribution would spill over into their blame for social systems. These heightened attributional activities led to people’s calls for regulatory intervention. Inconsistent findings for the two countries are also discussed.

Keywords:

• Personal control
• government control
• consumer collective control
• crisis responsibility attribution
• public demand for regulatory intervention

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In the US and China, one of the most serious crisis issues in the past five years is workplace sexual harassment (Institute for Crisis Management, 2019; Wang et al., 2022).

Additional information

Funding

This project is funded by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities in China (No. 127000*1942221R3/005).

Notes on contributors

Yingru Ji

Yingru Ji PhD is an assistant professor in the College of Media and International Culture at Zhejiang University, China. Her research interests include crisis communication, media technology, and corporate communication. Her work has been published in New Media & Society, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Public Relations Review, and other SSCI-listed communication journals.