How Does a Government Crisis Communication Strategy Affect Public Trust in Local Government? Evidence Based on a Survey Experiment

The choice of a communication strategy adopted by the local government to meet the needs of the public after the occurrence of a public crisis is an important issue in the practice of government governance and in academia. How and to what extent do different crisis communication strategies affect the public's political attitudes remain unresolved issues. This paper proposes two different government crisis communication strategies, “management-oriented” and “concern-oriented”, and based on real public emergencies, it attempts to construct a theoretical model that includes the crisis communication strategy, public sentiment, and government trust. We further analyze the internal mechanism and heterogeneity effects of two crisis communication strategies for three different types of public service events: unexpected events, defect events, and scandals. The study finds that: (1) After the occurrence of a public crisis, compared to the “management-oriented” crisis communication strategy, the “concern-oriented” crisis communication strategy is more helpful to improve the public's trust in local government. (2) Public emotions play an important mediating role in the process through which a government crisis communication strategy may affect local government trust. The reason a “concern-oriented” communication strategy is more helpful to improve the level of local government trust is mainly because it increases positive emotions (such as happiness and arousal) and reduces negative emotions (such as sadness and anger). At the same time, the influence of a positive path is greater than that of a negative path. We also find that the mediating effect of all emotions in unexpected events is no longer significant, which means that the “concern-oriented” communication strategy may still improve public trust even if it does not rely on emotion as an intermediary. (3) There are major differences in the impact of a crisis communication strategy on local government trust due to the different types of public crisis events. Compared with unexpected events or defect events, the use of a “concern-oriented” crisis communication strategy during the period of a scandal can improve the level of public trust in local government. The paper proposes two different crisis communication strategies, “management” and “concern”, based on an integrated perspective to expand the existing conceptual framework for crisis communication strategies, and it also provides new thinking for improving the communication effects at lower costs. At the same time, this paper deepens the existing literature on the internal mechanism in crisis communication strategies that affect local government trust from the perspective of public sentiment. In particular, a more specific division of public sentiment helps to explore the different impacts of a crisis communication strategy. In addition, this paper's investigation into the heterogeneity of the impact effects contributes to a reflection on the application scenarios of different communication strategies. Only by adopting differentiated communication strategies for different crisis events is it possible to achieve the best communication effects.