Food-related crises and warning messages: Examining 'best practices' in intercultural contexts

• In Event: Bad Food Requires Good PR: Crisis Communication and the Food Industry

Abstract

Scholars in risk and crisis communication offer the ten best practices that provide guidance for PR practitioners in their efforts of managing risk and crisis (Seeger, 2006). While some of the best practices address efforts of pre-planning and overall approach to crisis, five of the best practices (including best practice 5, honesty, candor, and openness, and best practice 8, communicating with compassion, concern, and empathy) offer concrete guidelines for designing and delivering risk and crisis messages to the public and key stakeholders.

Little empirical research has examined the efficacy of such best practices in the eyes of the public during a crisis event. In addition, it remains unknown whether such best practices have cross-cultural validity. For instance, in cultures where face-saving is prioritized over directness, do we still recommend communication with honesty, candor, and openness? In this study, we use survey data with 150 Chinese adults collected during the 2008 melamine in milk scandal. We examined the Chinese public’s perception of best practices behaviors by the central government during a crisis event, for which the government received much of the blame (“China’s melamine woes”, 2008). We seek to address the cross-cultural validity of the risk and crisis best practices; in addition, the findings also indicate that the public’s perceptions of best practices behaviors may have a significant impact on their affective and behavioral responses during a crisis.

Authors

• Min Liu, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville

• Julie Novak, Wayne State Univ