The Scared, the Outraged, and the Anxious: How Crisis Emotions, Involvement, and Demographics Predict Publics’ Conative Coping

ABSTRACT

Through a nationally representative survey of 1,840 U.S. adults, this study examined fright, anger, and anxiety as emotional predictors of how publics respond to organizational crisis communication and communicate with each other during a hypothetical terrorist attack. The study also examined the influences of age, gender, and publics’ involvement with prior media coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings through hierarchical regression analyses. Crisis emotions, involvement, and demographics are significant predictors of different communication behavioral outcomes. Insights and implications for practice and theory development are discussed.

Funding

This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate’s Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency through Grant Award Number 2012ST061CS0001 made to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START).

The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or START.

Notes

¹ With the exception of situational crisis communication theory’s adjusting information (Coombs, 2015), which has not been extensively empirically tested and theorized (Liu & Fraustino, 2014).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate’s Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency through Grant Award Number 2012ST061CS0001 made to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or START.