Government public relations when trouble hits: exploring political dispositions, situational variables, and government–public relationships to predict communicative action of publics

Abstract

Government agencies may face a crisis due to their inappropriate responses to natural or man-made disasters. However, crisis communication in government public relations has not been extensively researched. This study aimed to explore a segmentation framework to predict the communicative action of citizens by using political dispositions, situational variables and organization–public relationships (OPRs). Ideology, voting history, trust, and problem recognition were significant factors to predict pro-government megaphoning, whereas referent criterion was a significant factor to predict anti-government megaphoning.