Does severity matter?: An investigation of crisis severity from defensive attribution theory perspective

• Published in: Public relations review Vol. 44; no. 4; pp. 610 - 618
• Main Authors: Zhou, Ziyuan, Ki, Eyun-Jung
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Silver Spring Elsevier Inc 01.11.2018; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Attribution; Business communications; Corporate image; Crises; Crisis responsibility; Crisis severity; Factorial experiments; Intentionality; Organizational reputation; Public relations; Reputations; SCCT; Crisis severity; Crisis responsibility; Organizational reputation; SCCT
• ISSN: 0363-8111; 1873-4537
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pubrev.2018.08.008

•Crisis severity is a relatively neglected variable in the SCCT model. Based on Defensive Attribution Theory (DAT), this study reinvestigated the influence of crisis severity on crisis responsibility across different crisis types.•This study designed a 2 (crisis severity: high vs. low) by 3 (crisis type: victim, accidental, preventable) between-subject experiment and recruited 274 subject from Amazon Mechanical Turk.•The study revealed that higher crisis severity causes worse reputation regardless of crisis type. For the accidental crisis, higher crisis severity leads higher intentionality, one dimension of crisis responsibility. The authors believe crisis severity is still an important variable and deserves further investigation. Although the concept of crisis severity has existed in the crisis communication literature for two decades, it has not been theoretically tested and explained. Based on Defensive Attribution Theory (DAT), this study intends to specify the relationship between crisis severity and crisis responsibility as well as organizational reputation within the SCCT model. Through a 2 (crisis severity) × 3 (crisis type) between-subject factorial experiment (n = 274), the study revealed that higher crisis severity causes worse reputation regardless of crisis type. For accidental crisis, higher crisis severity leads to higher intentionality, one dimension of crisis responsibility. The findings indicate that crisis severity still has value in SCCT and deserves further investigation.