How organization response influences public sentiment and behavior in online crises: The role of response strategies, tenor of discourse and executives

Social media can exacerbate the negative impact of organizations' crises online. Effective communication is an important way for organizations to regain their reputations. This study, based on situational crisis communication theory, explores the impact of organizational crisis response strategies and the tenor of discourse on public online sentiment and behavior on social media. Additionally, it examines the moderating role of organizational executive's participation in communication. For empirical testing, 770 online corporate crisis blog posts and 931,668 public comments from the Sina Weibo platform are selected. The results indicate that diminish and rebuild strategies demonstrate better communication effectiveness for each type of crisis. Moreover, a humanized tone and network style have positive effects public sentiment and support behaviors. Organizational executive's participation in communication enhances the communication effectiveness of the diminish and rebuild strategies, while weakening the communication effectiveness of the network style.