Intention to comply with crisis messages communicated via social media

The rapid growth of social media challenges crisis communicators to disseminate safety messages to affected audiences quickly and in a manner that promotes maximum compliance. A nationally representative consumer panel responded to food recall messages that varied in source (organizational or user-generated) and reliability (confirmed versus unconfirmed). Results indicated that intent to comply with a food recall message was stronger in response to organizational messages than to user-generated messages, but did not vary according to message reliability. Strong age cohort effects were seen in the responses to message source, with younger participants making less distinction than older cohorts between organizational and user-generated sources. Implications of the results for public relations and crisis communications theory and practice, limitations of the study, and recommendations for future research were discussed.

► We used a national, representative consumer panel to investigate the impact of message source and message reliability on audience intention to comply with a food recall message.
► Messages originating with organizations produced more intent to comply than messages originating in user-generated sources.
► Message reliability (confirmed or unconfirmed information) did not influence intent to comply with the food recall message.
► Responses to user-generated messages were predicted by participant age, which in turn was correlated with likelihood of active social media use.
► Research on social media benefits from the use of nationally representative samples instead of convenience undergraduate samples.