Is Being Funny a Useful Policy? How Local Governments' Humorous Crisis Response Strategies and Crisis Responsibilities Influence Trust, Emotions, and Behavioral Intentions

Abstract

This study is the first to investigate how a local government's humorously framed response strategy on social media to a low-severity crisis influences people's trust in the local government and their crisis-related behavioral intentions, specifically when considering the government's responsibility for the crisis. Based on the situational crisis communication theory, we examined the mediating role of experienced positive or negative affect on people's responses to a local government’s crisis communication strategy. Further, we exploratorily examined the predictive power and moderating role of demographics, sense of humor, disposition to trust, and the respective crisis scenarios. A total of 517 people participated in an online experiment in which they were confronted with three randomly presented fictive crisis scenarios where the local government’s crisis responsibility (high versus low) and the framing of their crisis response strategy (in form of humorous versus rational Twitter posts) were systematically varied between subjects. First, the results mostly corroborate earlier findings about the degree of crisis responsibility (that is, when a government's crisis responsibility is high, people have less trust and behavioral intentions) and about the mediating role of experienced affect. Second, we found that humorously framed strategies negatively influence trust and positive affect (but not behavioral intentions). In contrast to earlier findings, the crisis responsibility × framing interaction was not significant. Altogether, the results advise against using humor in crisis communications on social media, even in low-severity crisis. Exploratory analyses indicate that further investigations should focus on specific crisis characteristics and potential moderators.