Building Crisis-Ready Graduates: Mediating Effects of Response Strategy on University Students’ Preparedness and Communication Competency

This study investigates the mediating role of crisis response strategy in the relationship between students’ preparedness and crisis communication competency among undergraduates in a Malaysian higher education. Grounded in Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), the research adapts three core constructs namely crisis type identification, responsibility attribution, and strategic response selection to an educational context. A total of 419 undergraduate students from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia has participated in a cross-sectional survey. Using Hayes’ PROCESS macro (Model 4), mediation analyses revealed that crisis response strategy significantly mediated all three hypothesised pathways: understanding of crisis types (H1), perceived preparedness (H2), and responsibility attribution (H3). Partial mediation was observed in H1 and H3, while H2 demonstrated full mediation. These findings highlight the central role of strategic application in transforming students’ cognitive, ethical, and experiential readiness into effective crisis communication performance. The study extends SCCT beyond organizational actors to pre-professional learners and emphasizes the influence of collectivist cultural norms on responsibility framing and strategy selection. Practical implications for curriculum reform include integrating simulation-based learning and culturally responsive pedagogy into communication education. The findings contribute to theory by repositioning SCCT as both a diagnostic and developmental framework within higher education.