Emotions can help: The impact of emotional expressions in COVID-19 business crisis responses

Absztrakt (kivonat)

This study investigates the effects of expressing emotions as a crisis response strategy during the COVID-19 crisis. Previous socio-psychological research about the impact of emotions on human cognition and behaviors has found that emotions have social functions that influence the outcomes of our social interactions, thus navigating our behaviors accordingly. Considering that business crises are usually emotionally charged events for both stakeholders and the organization involved, scholars have been calling for more research efforts to further investigate the impacts of expressing emotions as a crisis response tactic. Therefore, framed under the Situational Crisis Communication theory (SCCT), the study conducted an experiment to examine the effects of emotional expressions with different valences of positivity and negativity in business COVID-19 crisis responses. Through the use of vignettes, the current study reveals that expressing emotions with either negative valence, positive valence or a mix of both negative and positive valences resulted in a more favorable influence on customers’ affects and feelings towards the organization, better ratings of reputation and a higher level of purchase intention. It also indicates that the effects of expressing emotions during a crisis might not be due to the positivity/negativity valence of emotions, but might be due to the core relational theme that each expressed discrete emotion implies. This study, hence, contributes to the extant body of emotional crisis communication research by confirming the importance of emotional expressions used in crisis responses. It also suggests possible strategies for public relations practitioners to implement during the challenging time of the COVID-19 crisis and provides future research directions to further explore the effectiveness of emotional crisis communication as an essential part of crisis response strategy for businesses.