Crisis Situations, Crisis Communication Strategies and Public Government Information Adoption Behavior: Two Survey Experiments

How governments should employ crisis communication strategies to enhance public government information adoption behavior across distinct crisis situations remains a pivotal issue in contemporary government crisis management. This study integrates the Situational Crisis Communication Theory and Information Adoption Theory, conducting two two-factor between-subject survey experiments from the perspective of public government information adoption behavior to explore the impacts of crisis situations on public government information adoption behavior and the underlying mediating mechanisms, and the moderating role of crisis communication strategies in the relationship between crisis situations and public government information adoption behavior. The findings indicate: (1) Regarding the two dimensions of crisis situations “crisis type-crisis history”, for the crisis type dimension, compared with no specific crisis type information, both accidental crisis and preventable crisis significantly negatively affect public government information adoption behavior, and preventable crisis exert a more pronounced negative impact than accidental crisis; for the crisis history dimension, compared with no crisis history, having crisis history significantly negatively influences public government information adoption behavior. (2) Organizational responsibility attribution and organizational reputation play a chain mediating role in the relationship between crisis situations and public government information adoption behavior. (3) Crisis communication strategies moderate the relationship between crisis situations and public government information adoption behavior. Specifically, in the crisis situation of “accidental crisis with no crisis history”, the diminish strategy is more effective in promoting public government information adoption behavior than the denial strategy; in the crisis situations of “accidental crisis with crisis history”, “preventable crisis with no crisis history” and “preventable crisis with crisis history”, the rebuild strategy proves more effective than both denial and diminish strategies in fostering public government information adoption behavior. This study not only expands the research perspective of government crisis communication theoretically, but also provides practical implications for governments to employ matched crisis communication strategies tailored to different crisis situations, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of government information adoption.