Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management

Volume 17 Number 2 June 2009

Cause and Consequences of Crises: How Perception Can Inuence Communication

Misse Wester
Department of Philosophy, Royal Institute of Technology, Teknikringen 78B, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden. E-mail: misse.wester@infra.kth.se

This article focuses on how different events that cause a crisis are perceived by communication ofcers. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the attribution of whatever has caused a crisis affects how the crisis is perceived and how this in turn affects communication efforts. Previous research indicates that people will respond differently to risks depending on the cause of the risk, even though the consequence is the same. If individuals react to a crisis differently depending on what caused it, is that also true for crisis professionals and if so, does this inuence the planning and execution of crisis communication? This article presents the results from an empirical investigation of crisis communicators in Sweden. The results reveal that there are differences within this group of professionals when they are presented with crises due to different causes. The possible implications this might have for crisis communication are discussed.

1. Introduction

ow to best communicate to different audiences during a crisis is a topic of much interest since today crisis management seems to be high on the political agenda. The information released in times of crises often needs to be timely, accurate and should provide relevant information to those affected. Today, crisis communication strategies are present in nearly all kinds of ventures, making it an interesting and relevant area for research. The content of the crisis communication is of course dependent on what type of crisis is at hand, ranging from public apologies when the reputation of an organization is at stake, to emergency behaviour in case of a major natural disaster. This article will focus on how different events that cause a crisis are perceived by communication ofcers. More specically, the data presented here were gathered from communication ofcers responsible for providing the general public with information in case of a crisis. In brief, the structure of crisis management in Sweden is as follows: all 290 municipalities are required by law to have a crisis management committee that will convene in case of an extraordinary event. An extraordinary event is dened

as [during peacetime] an event that deviates from the norm and disrupts, or threatens to disrupt, the important societal functions and demands expedient actions of a municipality or county council [SFS, 2006, p. 544 (authors translation)]. This law also states that each municipality and county council must produce a risk and vulnerability assessment, as well as a crisis management plan. The latter document should specify a communication plan, as well as an individual being responsible for carrying this out. The main objective of this study was to investigate how these communication professionals, rather than the public, perceived and were inuenced by the events leading up to a crisis. It was also of interest to see how, based on this, the participants judgements affected what information they believed was important for the public to have, and what sources they believed the public would turn to in order to obtain this information.

2. Previous research
Within the eld of crisis communication, considerable research has been devoted to mapping how lay people

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Cause and Consequences of Crises perceive certain crises and what communication or information is needed to suit the demands of the situation, be it changing individuals perception or behaviour. This has led to the development of a number of strategies for communication, regardless of what has caused the crisis. The form and content of the communication has been recognized as important, where communicators are urged to respond quickly and with information that is relevant for the affected stakeholders or groups (Coombs & Holladay, 1996; Coombs, 1999). Indeed, different causes have been seen to inuence the content of the information given to those affected, as communication of threats such as large-scale technical accidents or terrorism takes on a slightly different approach than if an organization is faced with a reputational crisis. During an emergency, such as a natural disaster, instructing people on how best to protect themselves, where to turn if they need emergency relief and what precautionary measures they can take is seen as most important. It has been found that this instructing information should contain the what, why, when, where, and how details concerning the crisis (Coombs, 1999, p. 127). In the past, crisis communication has been encouraged to focus on causes and who or what that is to be blamed, as a way of reducing threat and uncertainty. This approach, however, is being called into question (Seeger, 2002). Instead, when the causes leading to a crisis are unclear or unknown, communicating uncertainty and ambiguity is now encouraged as a best practice of crisis communication. Other than providing instructions, what information should communicators focus on? Some evidence suggests that comprehension, compassion and attribution are issues that are important when planning and implementing crisis communication (Coombs, 1999, 2004; Coombs & Holladay, 1996; Keselman, Slaughter, & Patel, 2005; Seeger, 2006). Communication benets from acknowledging or attributing the cause of the risk or crisis, because it provides the context for the situation (Coombs & Holladay, 1996). Although this is noted, there is little research on how and whether crisis attribution affects those responsible for distributing information, and how this inuences what information they release to the wider public. Previously, authorities have been reluctant to share information concerning different risks and crises out of concern that the public, or groups of people, might react with protests, irrational behaviour or even panic (Perry & Lindell, 2003; Sandman, 2006). To a certain extent, this can be understood, as in some cases individuals can object to the risk-managing process as a whole or to how a crisis has been managed once the initial turmoil has settled. It has been noted that providing people with detailed information concerning the events leading up to a crisis can cause them to believe that the risk could

119 have been better managed or that the crisis could have been altogether avoided (Coombs, 1999). Also, some evidence suggests that risk managers see a danger in opening up the risk assessment process to larger scrutiny, as it may invite discussions of overall risks rather than those controlled by the individual company, leading to delays or costly processes (Gouldson, Lidskog, & Wester Herber, 2007; Wiseen & Wester-Herber, 2007). However, these observations cannot provide support for a less is more attitude in crisis communication practices, because purposely withholding information can have far more damaging consequences. Providing citizens with relevant and sufcient information can encourage them to comply with emergency procedures in case of an emergency (Palenchar, Heath, & Oberton, 2005). Context is important for how individuals perceive a situation and it can be concluded that it is better to openly communicate what has caused the crisis, as it will inuence how the affected, or other groups, will perceive and react to the crisis. In the planning phases of crisis communication, it might be wise to consider how people react to what precedes a crisis the risk of something negative happening. The eld of risk perception and risk communication research has provided additional knowledge of how people react before and during a crisis. It is not only the events that cause crises that are important to acknowledge in crisis communication, there also needs to be an analysis of how people are affected in a nancial, emotional or physical way. Specic characteristics of the consequences of crises have received considerable attention within the eld of risk communication since the introduction of the psychometric paradigm (Fischhoff, Slovic, Lichtenstein, Read, & Combs, 1978). This model suggests that how risks, or crises, are perceived and reacted towards depends to a large extent on the degree of dread it invokes. Although the theoretical concept of dread has been questioned (Sjoberg, 2002), it can be agreed upon that risk perception is more inuenced by possible conse quences, rather than the estimated probability (Sjoberg, 2002). Also, risk communicators have seen that risk is a multi-dimensional concept where focus is not just on the probabilities and technical estimates, but also includes an outrage factor that includes cognitive and affective components. These outrage factors have been used to explain reactions to crisis communication in emergency situations (Lachlan & Spence, 2007). For example, people will respond differently to risks depending on the cause of the risk even though the consequence is the same. For example, health risks from naturally occurring background radon radiation will be judged (or rather reacted to) differently from radiation from radon due to an industrial contamination. In the rst case, the risk derives from a natural source where no one is to blame and the exposure is

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Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management Volume 17 Number 2 June 2009

120 unintentional, whereas in the second case, the risk is man-made and a result of careless risk management. In the latter case, chances are that the reaction, and communication, will focus more on questions of responsibility and fairness, whereas proactive and corrective measures will dominate the former. The risk perception literature shows that gender differences exist in lay samples, where men are usually found to have a lower risk perception than women (Flynn, Slovic, & Mertz, 1994; Finucane, Slovic, Mertz, Flynn, & Sattereld, 2000; Wester-Herber & Warg, 2002). These differences are also found in expert samples, i.e., individuals with the same profession who are experts in their eld, where the pattern is the same: men have a lower perception of risks when compared with women in the same profession (Slovic, Malmfors, Mertz, Neil, & Purshase, 1997). This could be explained by the perceived inuence and control over the processes that regulate and mitigate risk, although it has been argued that gender differences are not sufciently explored (Gustafson, 1998). Individuals use different channels when looking for information during a crisis. Traditional media such as television and radio seem to be important sources (Mileti & OBrian, 1992). Keeping on good terms with representatives from the media is thus recommended (Reynolds & Coombs, 2005; Seeger, 2006; Wiseen & Wester-Herber, 2007). Media is most often seen as a good way to get the desired message across to a large audience, but the information that is released must be veried and controlled in order to avoid confusing information. Some evidence suggests that personal information networks (e.g., being told in person or through a cellular phone) and television were the largest sources of information during the terrorist attack on 11 September 2001 (Bracken, Jeffres, Neuendorf, Kopfman, & Moulla, 2005). It has also been found that ethnic groups differ in how they search for information in case of a crisis and also judge the credibility of sources differently (Spence, Lachlan, & Grifn, 2007). Having one spokesperson responsible for media contacts seems like a sound tactic, but the impact of the rapidly evolving information technology is challenging this position. New media channels such as internet sites, blogs, cellular phones (with their builtin cameras) and other personal information networks inuence the communication process in ways that are not yet fully understood. This illustrates that the role of new and traditional media needs to be further researched and the results need to be incorporated into future communication plans. However, the media does not always present an unbiased and undistorted picture of the crisis. Recent analysis of the medial coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 indicates that news stories that are based on unsubstantiated claims of e.g., looting and widespread outbursts of panic, can

Misse Wester have detrimental effects on crisis management (Tierney, Bevc, & Kuligowski, 2006). The aim of this paper is to investigate how the attribution of whatever has caused a crisis affects how the crisis is perceived and how this affects communication efforts. If it can be assumed that individuals perceive and react to a risk or a crisis depending on what caused the event, is this considered in the planning and execution of crisis communication? Crisis communication is often portrayed as a means to convey information that will in some way mitigate the impact of a crisis, be it from the perspective of the reputation of an organization or the survival of individuals. However, does this imply that the communication is unaffected by the cause of the crisis, or are the strategies the same regardless of the event, or are communication plans already decided on and cannot vary depending on the situation? To what extent do communication ofcers believe that the public will rely on traditional information pathways rather than newer ones and what implication does this have for their plans to disseminate information to affected groups? And in what ways do communication ofcers differ? In this article, terms like emergency and crisis will be used interchangeably as they both refer to situations where normal conditions are suspended. Also, because the individuals who are responsible for crisis communication on the municipal and county council level have different educational backgrounds, where some are information professionals and others are re-ghters or safety ofcers, the term used here will be communication ofcers as it refers more to the responsibility these individuals have for disseminating information to the public in case of a crisis than to their formal education. The role of the communication ofcer is to be part of the crisis management team in the case of a crisis, serving directly under the municipal director. The different municipalities are free to decide for themselves whether the communication ofcer should handle all contacts with the media and the public, or whether this task falls on another person. What is relevant for this article is that the communication ofcer is responsible for preparing the information that is to be distributed to the public in the event of a crisis.

3. Method and material

The aim of this paper is to investigate how the attribution of whatever has caused a crisis affects how the crisis is perceived and how this in turn affects communication efforts. For this purpose, a survey was constructed, containing 58 questions concerning crisis communication. In this article, results from a total of 23 items are presented: where eight items concern the

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Cause and Consequences of Crises attribution of crisis, ve items the consequences of the crisis and 10 items what information channels these ofcials believed the public would use. Regarding the items measuring the causal attribution of crises, permission was given to utilize scales constructed by Coombs and Holladay (1996). These authors developed three scales for measuring the causal attribution of a crisis: locus/intention, external control and stability. In short, locus/intention reects whether or not the crisis is caused by an actor or a situation; external control refers to whether the event that caused the crisis is controllable or not, and stability points towards whether or not the cause of the event is stable over time. These scales were used in the present study, after they were translated into Swedish. The original scales contained 10 items. However, as the purpose of this study was to investigate large societal crises, rather than organizational crises, two items that were judged to focus on the organization rather than society were excluded. Sweden consists of 290 municipalities and 21 county boards. In each of these, one person is responsible for communicating with the public during a crisis. Since the aim of this study was to reach all of these individuals, the survey was distributed by email to 321 persons. The response rate was 55% (N 152), after correcting for persons who did not want to participate or were no longer working for the municipality. Three different versions of the survey were developed in order to measure how different causes affected the communication ofcers responses. The respondents were presented with a scenario where there was an outbreak of smallpox in their communities. The cause of this outbreak differed, so that in the rst case tourists had inadvertently brought the virus from a remote part of the world (Accidental), in the second case the virus was spread intentionally by a group of terrorists (Terrorist) and in the third case the cause of the spread was unknown (Unknown). For all three versions, the survey questions were identical but the cause of the crisis differed. The different causes were randomly distributed across the three groups. The material presented here thus focuses on three main areas: attribution, perception of consequences and choice of information sources.

121 of the respondents, 18 % of the sample). The analysis also revealed that no scenario was over- or underrepresented as each one represented roughly one-third of the respondents, but caution needs to be exercised when generalizing these results.

5. Results
The eight items relating to attribution of the crisis were analysed as follows: First, a principal component analysis with VARIMAX rotation was performed in order to examine the data. The analysis showed that with one item removed, three factors emerged, explaining 67 % of the total variance and corresponding in large part to the study performed by Coombs and Holladay (1996). The three factors corresponded to aspects of external control, locus/ intentionality and stability. The factor loadings are presented in Table 1. This led to further analysis and the three items pertaining to external control were summarized to a form an index after one item was recoded (a .71). A high score on this index indicated that society did not have control over the cause of the crisis. In the same manner, the two items relating to locus/intentionality were summarized to form an index (a .62). The results are illustrated in Figure 1. Ideally, the three items relating to stability would have been summarized in a similar way. Unfortunately, the analysis of the data revealed that this would not provide a reliable index. The item labelled temporary did not contribute to any factor. The two remaining items, stable over time and changeable, did not form a reliable index and the decision was made to analyse these three items separately. This meant that instead of having three indexes to proceed with, the following analyses were performed with two indexes and three separate items. To investigate whether or not the three groups differed in attributing external control across the three scenarios, an ANOVA was performed. The Scheffe post hoc analysis showed that the Accidental scenario was

Table 1. Factor Loadings for Attribution of Causality

4. Limitations
These scenarios are ctitious, calling the relevance of them in a real situation into question. Also, the response rate was lower than expected, implying that the generalization of the results should be made with caution. An analysis of attrition revealed that there was a slight overrepresentation of women who participated in the survey, as compared with the whole sample (28%
Not controllable Outside societys control Can handle Cause within Cause outside Cause stable Cause changeable

Component 1 .864 .778 .718 .858 .829 .812 .774 2 3

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122
12 10 8 Means 6 4 2 0 Accidental Terrorist External Control Unknown Locus/Intention

Misse Wester
Table 2. Scheffe Test of Signicant Differences in Means for Temporal Aspects Accidental Temporary Stable over time Changeable 3.36a 3.04b 3.59a Terrorist 2.64a 3.19a 3.71a Unknown 2.88 2.48a,b 2.85a

a, differ at p .001; b, differ at p .005.

Table 3. Factor Loadings for Consequences Component 1 Uncontrolled Unknown Dreadful Immoral Unfair .834 .776 .703 .923 .902 2

Figure 1. Means for Indexes of Control and Locus for the Three Scenarios.

3 Means

2 14 1 12 10 Means 0 Accidental Temporary Terrorist Stable Unknown Changeable 8 6 4

Figure 2. Means for Items Relating to Temporal Aspects of Crises.

2 0 Accidental Terrorist Dreaded Immoral Unknown

signicantly lower than the other two F(2, 147) 5.76, p .004. The index for locus/intentional showed that there were no signicant differences between the three scenarios. The means for the items measuring temporal stability are presented in Figure 2. As for the three items measuring attributions of stability, ANOVA was used in order to investigate whether the ratings differed between the scenarios. The results show that there are signicant differences in all three items: temporary F(2, 146) 2.13, p .007; stable over time F(2, 146) 6.73, p .004; and changeable F(2, 147) 10.43, p .000. The results for the Scheffe post hoc test are presented in Table 2. The results show that there are signicant differences in almost all cases, suggesting that the stability of different causes of crisis is judged differently. Also, the consequences of the crisis were investigated. The same procedure was followed for the analysis of the ve items measuring this aspect as described above. A principal component analysis with VARIMAX rotation revealed two factors, explaining 72 % of the variance. The factor loadings are presented in Table 3. These items were also summarized into two indexes: one representing Dreadful consequences (a .66) and one representing the moral aspects of the consequences (a .83). Again, ANOVAs were used to

Figure 3. Means for Implications of Consequences of the Three Scenarios.

determine whether the three scenarios differed from each other with regard to these two aspects of consequences. The results are presented in Figure 3. The differences were only signicant concerning the moral aspects of the consequences of the crisis, where the consequences of the Terrorist-caused scenario were seen to be more immoral (M 6.35, SD 2.13) than the case of the Unknown cause (M 5.04, SD 2.03) F(2, 145) 4.65, p .011. There were no signicant differences in either the attribution indexes or the consequence indexes between large and small municipalities. Women did report a higher score for all indexes but these differences were not signicant. The respondents were also asked to rate what information they judged to be of importance to the public in this scenario. Figure 4 shows the mean ratings of the ve information items. There was only one signicant difference between the scenarios, more specically where information concerning who or what was responsible for causing

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Cause and Consequences of Crises

6 5 4 Means 3 2 1 0
Facts and disease prevention Contact information Reassuring information Facts about the Who or what cause of crisis responsible for crisis

123 Third, the perception of dreadful consequences did not differ over the three scenarios, suggesting that this factor does not, in a reliable way, at least as it is used in this study, affect the judgement of the consequences. This could imply that the communication ofcers would not specically address or reduce specic outrage factors that inuence individuals reactions to risks or crises. This is unfortunate, especially since the consequences of a terrorist attack often lead to feelings of anger, frustration and fear. Also, even though a crisis might be the result of an accident, questions of fairness and lack of control will certainly need to be addressed. Finally, the information that is judged to be most important to communicate to the public are facts about the disease and protective measures that can be undertaken, followed by information on how to contact key personnel in the crisis management. This indicates that facts and emergency procedures continue to dominate the communication strategies. The least important questions to communicate were the facts of how this happened and what/who was responsible. Only in the case where the crisis was caused by a terrorist act was information regarding who or what was responsible judged to be more important than in the other two scenarios. Still, this information did not make the topthree list in any of the cases. Instead, it seems that the focus is on facts, numbers and reassuring people, instead of sharing information on what caused this. It could be that the respondents thought that information concerning causes of the crisis is to be released at a later time, when the initial protective and emergency measures have been adopted. Of course, in the initial stages of a crisis, it might be difcult to nd out exactly what the cause is, making it impossible to communicate. However, once the cause is known and choosing not to emphasize the cause of what has just happened because it is judged not to be important does not have any support in research results, but could instead increase the need for more information in order to provide people with the complete picture. What implications do these results have for crisis communication? The results presented here indicate that crisis communicators make their own judgements about what information the public needs, with the focus being on delivering facts and contact information, and with the least importance given to communicating the nature of the event that caused the crisis. Of course, crisis communication must primarily focus on emergency responses and what measures individuals can take to protect themselves and their loved ones. But crises rarely erupt in a contextual vacuum and perhaps communicators place too much emphasis on how central their role will be during an actual crisis. Consider the implications of providing the names and numbers of communication ofcers in a municipality with a population of 200,000 during a crisis. Chances are that the

Accidental

Terrorist

Unknown

Figure 4. Mean Ratings for Importance of Types of Information to the Public for the Three Crises.

the crisis, where the differences between the Terrorist (M 3.07, SD 1.04) and Accidental (M 2.41, SD 1.23) scenario differed F(2, 147) 4.62, p .011.

6. Discussion and conclusions

The results presented here suggest that four conclusions can be drawn regarding the perception of the crises: First, the results from the study indicate that communication ofcers perceive crisis caused by accidents as within the control of society to a greater extent than crisis caused by terrorist attacks. Crises as a result of a terrorist attacks or where the cause is unknown are judged to be farther from societys control, suggesting that natural disasters are seen as more controllable. How does this affect the planning of crisis communication? These results suggest that controlling accidental events leading to a crisis is lower when compared with other types of events, implying perhaps that responsibility for these accidents will be judged as more diffuse. Perhaps this will lead to a lesser effort at establishing who or what is responsible for the crisis, as is also suggested by the results presenting that the causes and responsibilities of the event are not judged to be of great importance in any of the cases. Second, crises emerging from terrorist attacks are seen as a stable, but highly immoral, element in modern society. Even though the cause is judged to be more changeable than the other two types of crises, it can be hypothesized that this is due to the changeability or the diversity of the nature of the attacks (e.g., diversity such as suicide bombs, aerosol spread of a virus or largescale attacks such as 11 September), rather than the events themselves. Again, it is difcult to predict whether or not this result would have a direct effect on the information provided to the public. It does, however, say something about how such attacks are perceived in a country that has not (yet?) experienced any terrorist acts and about the resources that are spent trying to address such threats.

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124 municipalities switchboards as well as websites, where crisis information can be posted, would completely collapse as the number of people searching for information on these two channels alone would increase. Perhaps setting up and distributing information on alternative ways of gathering information should be provided, in order to relieve the strain on local resources. These results further suggest that communication between individuals and rumours are not judged to be vital sources of information, at the same time as communicating the unknown and uncertainties of a crisis situation is not made an explicit priority. This is somewhat surprising as crises are recognized for being chaotic, where multiple sources are sought in order to obtain maximal information, and where rumours and misconceptions have ample ground for ourishing (Reynolds, 2006). In the case of Hurricane Katrina, rumours regarding rape, murder and looting that later turned out to be false were reported in the media, making citizens reluctant to help each other (Tierney et al., 2006). Again, more sources of information need to be developed and communication aimed at full disclosure concerning the events and consequences should be planned for. Perhaps the limited role that the interpersonal information networks and rumours are given by the communication ofcers is a result of wishful thinking, as this would make the control over information more easy to achieve. However, it can also be a result of a perception of the public as not being easily inuenced by rumours or unveried information, but instead as rational individuals seeking information. If this is the case, considerable progress has been made in making ofcials believe that the public are not prone to panic or believe anything they read on the Internet. More research is needed to clarify this issue. In conclusion, these ndings suggest that crisis communicators will focus on facts and on reassuring the affected public. Further, it seems that in this case the what, why, when, where and how are instead what and who with dont worry in third place. Last on the list are the causes of the crisis, as well as those responsible. This is particularly interesting because it has been shown here that the cause of a crisis affects the perception of the professionals studied here. It can be concluded that at the very least, communication ofcers should be encouraged to review their own perception of various crises and how this can inuence their communication strategies, focusing on how much these plans are inuenced by previous experiences, observations or personal preferences and assumptions. This study adds further evidence to the discrepancy between research and practice, something that should not be insurmountable to achieve for communication experts. Still, perhaps one of the most intriguing questions is whether or not these theories t the publics information needs and the media channels

Misse Wester that the public will actually prefer, depending of course on the kind of crisis they are faced with.

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