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AbstractDrawing on two representative online surveys in Hong Kong (HK) and the United States (US) during the COVID‐19 pandemic, this study investigates, from a public‐centric perspective, public expectations of effective government pandemic‐crisis communication. The study looks specifically at what the publics want to be communicated in times of a global pandemic and how. In each region, the findings identify four significant dimensions. Three are culturally universal dimensions—basic responsibility, locus of pandemic‐crisis responsibility, and disfavour of promotional tone. The fourth is culture‐specific—personal relevance for HK and frequency for the US. Among the significant dimensions, the most highly expected is what people consider to be the government's basic responsibility in pandemic communication, that is, a basic responsibility dimension. This includes providing instructing and adjusting information and securing accuracy, timeliness, and transparency in pandemic communication. In both regions, respondents preferred by far traditional media and nongovernmental sources to social media and governmental sources.

Through two representative surveys—one in Beijing the other in Hong Kong (HK)—this study empirically validates an existing U.S.-based model of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication process. The study also extends the model by adding government trust as a second moderator and government involvement as a unique dimension of CSR communication. The perceived presence of CSR communication factors results in increases in consumers' cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses. In turn, these increases improve favorable corporate reputation perception. Such results demonstrate the significant contributions of CSR communication dimensions to positive consumer outcomes in Chinese contexts. The process of CSR communication has significantly different features in Chinese contexts than in Western ones. Chinese consumers (both Beijing and HK) revealed a very high tolerance and acceptance of CSR communication with a self-promotional tone. The trust levels of HK consumers in the government tended to negatively moderate the effectiveness of CSR communication, while those of Beijing consumers did not.

This study empirically tests (1) expectancy violations theory's applicability to the setting of organization–public relationships and explores (2) the effectiveness of post-crisis communication in the post-crisis stage by employing a real crisis. The findings suggest that stakeholders' relational satisfaction and predictive and prescriptive expectancies are significant predictors, determining negative valence, uncertainty level, and other negative responses toward the organization in crises. Finally, the study also suggests that actively communicating crisis-related information, even during the post-crisis stage, is more effective in protecting positive corporate reputation than a no-message or a justification strategy.

AbstractIn the social media era, a growing number of corporate crises are entwined with salient social issues. To address such crises, publics may demand their government take action with regulations, legislation or public policy remediation. Through two online experiments in China, this study investigates how social media bandwagon cues contribute to public demand for regulatory intervention during corporate crises. This study finds that a social media post collecting a great number of likes, comments and shares (i.e., high levels of bandwagon cues) can directly lead to increased public demand. This study also reveals significant mediating roles of perceived crisis severity and publics' responsibility attributions to dual agents—an in‐crisis company and social systems wherein the company operates. When publics are exposed to a post with high levels of bandwagon cues, they perceive greater crisis severity, which in turn increases their responsibility attribution to the company and to social systems. The heightened responsibility attribution then spills over to public demand. Moreover, crisis blame frames of the post content moderated the effects of bandwagon cues on publics' attribution to social systems and subsequent public demand.

This article reports two studies conducted in the United States, Germany, South Korea, and China to examine how online content providers (OCPs) exercise their responsibility in dealing with harmful online communication (HOC) by moderating user‐generated content. The first study employed content analysis of 547 HOC policy documents. In the second study, 41 representatives of OCPs were interviewed regarding the implementation of these policies. We show that HOC policies are most often communicated through user‐unfriendly terms of service. Only Korean OCPs present their policies very vividly. Few organizations, mainly United States and German, encourage counter‐speech. The most common organizational actions against HOC mentioned in the policies are deleting posts or blocking accounts. The interviews reveal, however, that organizations—apart from those from China—are cautious in implementing such reactive actions. They fear accusations of censorship and acknowledge the tension between free speech and their content moderation practice. What emerged as the "gold standard" for identifying HOC was manual inspection. However, organizations operating large platforms widely apply machine‐learning technology or artificial intelligence. In sum, our research suggests that OCPs are not proactive enough in their communication for HOC prevention and often focus more on avoiding legal ramifications than on educating users when handling HOC.

Through an online survey of Beijing consumer publics, this study examines a moderated mediation model of public demand for regulatory intervention ensuing from a corporate crisis that entirely unfolded on social media platforms. The study finds that highly involved publics tend to attribute crisis responsibility more to the in-crisis company, and such attribution leads to stronger demand for regulatory intervention. However, the effects of issue involvement on public demands decrease when publics think they have collective efficacy to control crisis outcomes and that government has controllability over crisis outcomes. The study further finds that, in determining the degree of public demand, how publics attribute crisis responsibility is not as important as how they perceive government controllability. By delineating the relationships among issue involvement, responsibility attribution, perceived government controllability, and collective efficacy, this study outlines a comprehensive psychological mechanism of public demand for regulatory intervention during corporate crisis.

Through a cross-sectional online survey, this study examines the moderated mediation model of public skepticism toward organizational altruism and public distrust of CSR messages in the process of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication. Focusing solely on CSR communication elements rather than CSR practice, this study sheds light on the significant role that effective CSR communication elements play in attenuating public skepticism and further inducing positive public evaluations of an organization. Our results suggest that skepticism toward altruism is significantly reduced by the six effective CSR communication elements—CSR informativeness, transparency, objectivity, consistency, personal relevance, and a less promotional tone. In turn, an organization is able to restore the publics' positive evaluation of it. Although this study confirms the moderating role of public distrust in the process, it also reveals this moderating role to move in an unexpected direction. That is, the positive effects of effective CSR communication elements are much greater for people who have stronger distrust of CSR messages than those with less distrust. This indicates that public distrust of CSR messages (developed over time) may be overcome with quality CSR communication.

AbstractThrough an online national survey in China, the study empirically examines the serial mediation effects of active communication behaviour and post‐crisis corporate associations in the relationships between initial crisis perceptions of problem, constraint, and involvement recognitions and government associations. The study suggested that higher problem and involvement recognitions were positively associated with more active communication behaviour in crisis, and such active communication behaviour was in turn positively associated with more favourable post‐crisis corporate associations. The findings also revealed connections between post‐crisis corporate associations and government associations, suggesting publics' psychological associations of the company in crisis were extended to government associations in China.

AbstractThrough two representative surveys – one in Beijing the other in Hong Kong – this research empirically examines the culturally relevant dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication in the context of China and investigates what Chinese consumers expect for CSR communication such as communication content, media channels, and sources. One dimension of CSR communication in China that this study identifies as unique is government involvement. Other dimensions include general CSR information, factual tone, transparency, and personal relevance. In this study, Chinese consumers are found to prefer non‐corporate sources and uncontrolled media channels. The study also identifies differences between Beijing and Hong Kong consumers regarding their expectations of CSR communication. The study offers a basis for developing a culturally relevant theoretical framework of CSR communication, as it identifies the significant dimensions of such communication from a stakeholder‐centric perspective in the context of China. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

The current study reveals that an organization can increase its personification and personality dimensions on social networking sites by adopting an interpersonal approach of communication (i.e., increased interaction, conversational tone). This personification of the organization led to an increased perceived relationship investment, eventually leading to an increased perceived relationship quality toward the organization. Five personality dimensions were examined, and of these the sincerity dimension mediated the influence of personification on perceived relationship investment. This finding suggests that sincerity might be an important dimension for organization-public relationship building.

Through an experiment, this study examined how varying degrees of consumer–company identification, crisis severity and different crisis response messages (i.e., two‐sided vs. one‐sided) affected consumers' responses to corporate crisis and the crisis‐affected company. Results suggested that two‐sided response messages were more effective in reducing the attribution of crisis responsibility than one‐sided positive response messages for weak identifiers, while one‐sided positive response messages were more effective than two‐sided response messages for strong identifiers. But this message effect was only found in low but not high severity crisis. Findings of the study indicated that consumer–company identification may serve as one of the key factors in predicting consumer reactions to crisis.