Uncertainty management in organizational crisis communication: the impact of crisis responsibility uncertainty and attribution-based emotions on publics' further crisis information seeking

Purpose Although uncertainty has been identified as a key crisis characteristic and a multi-faceted construct essential to effective crisis management research and practice, only a few studies examined publics' perceived uncertainty with a focus on crisis severity uncertainty, leaving crisis responsibility uncertainty uninvestigated in organizational crisis settings. Design/methodology/approach To close this research gap empirically, this study employed data from an online survey of a total of 817 US adults to examine how participants' crisis responsibility uncertainty and their attribution-based crisis emotions might impact their crisis responses such as further crisis information seeking. Findings First, findings show that participants' crisis responsibility uncertainty was negatively associated with their attribution-independent (AI) crisis emotions (i.e. anxiety, fear, apprehension and sympathy) and external-attribution-dependent (EAD) crisis emotions (i.e. disgust, contempt, anger and sadness), but positively associated with internal-attribution-dependent (IAD) crisis emotions (i.e. guilt, embarrassment and shame). Second, crisis responsibility uncertainty and AI crisis emotions were positive predictors for participants' further crisis information seeking. Third, AI crisis emotions and IAD crisis emotions were parallel mediators for the relationship between participants' crisis responsibility uncertainty and their further crisis information seeking. Practical implications Organizations need to pay attention to the perceived uncertainty about crisis responsibility and attribution-based crisis emotions since they can impact the decision of seeking crisis information during an ongoing organizational crisis. Originality/value This study improves uncertainty management in organizational crisis communication research and practice, connecting crisis responsibility uncertainty, attribution-based crisis emotions and publics' crisis information seeking.