Roles of Crisis Memory Narratives in Public Health Crisis Responses: An Experimental Study Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response Theory

When a new crisis occurs, narratives surrounding past crises are often intensively created and shared on social media, which together form a kind of crisis memory in current crisis communication and these narratives are referred to as crisis memory narratives. This study examined the effects of the public’s exposure to various crisis memory narratives of SARS (i.e. nationalism, heroism, identity, trauma, criticism, and historical reference) on their cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to the current public health crisis of COVID-19 through an online experiment with a Chinese adult sample (n = 745). Based on the stimulus-organism-response theory, a parallel-serial mediation model was tested. The overall findings revealed that crisis memory narratives had limited direct effects on behavioral responses (i.e. supportive behavioral intentions); however, the effects on cognitive (i.e. perceived threats, efficacy, and government controllability) and affective responses (i.e. positive and negative emotions) were significant, and these responses greatly mediated between certain types of crisis memory narratives and supportive behavioral intentions.