采用2(新闻框架类型:诱发气愤情绪或诱发悲伤情绪)×2(危机事件团体回应类型:惩罚型或补偿型)×2(团体回应中情绪感染力的呈现情况:呈现或缺乏)的被试问实验设计,探讨不同版本的危机事件新闻报道诱发出的不同情绪如何影响个体的信息加工,以及情绪反应怎样影响个体对组织随后回应策略的偏好。结果发现:气愤情绪促使公众采用启发性加工方式,悲伤情绪促使公众采用系统性加工方式;相比于悲伤情绪,气愤情绪会导致公众对公司更加负面的态度;惩罚型回应信息的可信性更高;惩罚型和补偿型回应信息使公众对企业的态度从比较消极转变为偏向积极;具有强烈情绪感染力的回应信息更容易降低气愤组对企业的责任归因程度,并进而促进公众对企业态度的改变;公众的气愤和悲伤情绪水平在接受企业回应后明显减弱,但没有达到基线水平。结果表明。在面对危机事件时,新闻框架的类型、企业对危机事件的回应方式以及回应中的情绪感染力,会结合在一起,制约公众对危机事件的知觉以及对企业的判断。
Organizational crisis is a low-probability, high-impact event that threatens the viability of the organization and is characterized by ambiguity of cause, effect, and means of resolution. Crisis communication is aim to collect, process, and disseminate of information required to address a crisis situation. This research intended to investigate whether different versions of crisis news report could induce different emotions, then how different emotional frames would affect individuals' information processing and judgment differently and how these different emotional reactions influenced their preference of subsequent corporate responses strategies. The current study used 2×2×2 between-subject design. Independent variables were that the type of news frame (anger-inducing vs. sadness-inducing) and the type of corporate response toward the crisis (punishment- focused vs. relief-focused) and the presence of intensive emotional appeals in corporate responses (presence vs. absence). This experiment expected to measure subject's depth of information processing and the original attitudes towards the company through requiring subjects to read different versions of news report illustrating a crisis. Then, public would evaluate the corporate responses credibility, attitudes toward the company and the degree of blame attribution after reading responses released by responsible organization. The results suggested that (1) Emotions induced by different versions of news report resulted in differences of depth of information processing, that was, anger caused heuristic processing, and sadness caused systemic processing; (2) Participants exposed to anger-inducing crisis news had more negative attitudes toward the company than those exposed to sadness-inducing news; (3) Punishment-focused response was more credible; (4) Both relief-focused response and punishment-focused response promoted participants' attitudes towards company transforming from quite negative to a little bit positive after read