The Role of Storytelling in Crisis Communication: A Test of Crisis Severity, Crisis Responsibility, and Organizational Trust

Abstract

This study tested the effectiveness of storytelling as a crisis communication strategy with a 2 (Storytelling: Present Vs. Not-Present) × 2 (Crisis Locus of Control: External Vs. Internal) experiment. The effect of using storytelling was tested on perceptions of trust, crisis severity, and crisis responsibility. Findings indicate that storytelling effectively maintains the level of trust toward the organization and reduces the responsibility attribution during crisis. However, crisis locus of control did not moderate the effects of storytelling on perceptions of the proposed dependent variables. Findings suggest practical and theoretical need to examine the use of storytelling, including ethically communicating about a crisis.