Is Being Funny a Useful Policy?How Local Governments' Humorous Crisis Response Strategies and Crisis Responsibilities Influence Trust,Emotions,and Behavioral Intentions  

作　　者：Janna Hämpke Stefan Röseler Meinald T.Thielsch 

机构地区：[1]Department of Psychology,University of Münster,48149 Münster,Germany

出　　处：《International Journal of Disaster Risk Science》2022年第5期676-690,共15页国际灾害风险科学学报（英文版）

摘　　要：This study is the first to investigate how a local government’s humorously framed response strategy on social media to a low-severity crisis influences people ’s trust in the local government and their crisis-related behavioral intentions,specific ally when considering the government’s responsibility for the crisis.Based on the situational crisis communication theory,we examined the mediating role of experienced positive or negative affect on people’ s responses to a local government’s crisis communication strategy.Further,we exploratorily examined the predictive power and moderating role of demographics,sense of humor,disposition to trust,and the respective crisis scenarios.A total of517 people participated in an online experiment in which they were confronted with three randomly presented fictive crisis scenarios where the local government’s crisis responsibility(high versus low) and the framing of their crisis response strategy(in form of humorous versus rational Twitter posts) were systematically varied between subjects.First,the results mostly corroborate earlier findings about the degree of crisis responsibility(that is,when a government’s crisis responsibility is high,people have less trust and behavioral intentions) and about the mediating role of experienced affect.Second,we found that humorously framed strategies negatively influence trust and positive affect(but not behavioral intentions).In contrast to earlier findings,the crisis responsibility × framing interaction was not significant.Altogether,the results advise against using humor in crisis communications on social media,even in lowseverity crisis.Exploratory analyses indicate that further investigations should focus on specific crisis characteristics and potential moderators.

关 键 词：Afect Crisis communication Crisis responsibility HUMOR Situational crisis communication theory Social media 

分 类 号：D630[政治法律—政治学]