Not All Wrongdoers Are Equal in the Public Eye: A Moderated Mediation Model of Country Stereotypes, Condemning Emotions, and Retaliatory Intent in Corporate Crises

Abstract

Corporate crises generate condemning emotions and retaliatory intent toward the offending companies. However, not all wrongdoers are equal in the public eye. Consumers’ prior beliefs about a company’s country of origin may bias these responses. In three experimental studies (combined N = 1,008), the authors (1) establish that country stereotypes of warmth—but not of competence—can buffer condemning emotions and retaliatory intent toward an offending company. They further (2) reveal the psychological mechanism of greed attributions that underlies this bias and (3) identify the type of crisis as a crucial contingency factor that facilitates (corporate ability crisis) or suppresses (corporate value crisis) the buffering effect of country warmth.