Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management最新文献

This study presents and discusses a systematic approach to exercises that gradually develops the competence required to respond adequately to crises and emergencies. Based on interviews with professionals from emergency organizations in one of Norway's largest regions, the findings demonstrate a learning-oriented approach that prioritizes learning over merely conducting exercises. The study shows how exercises can be used to systematically build competence by selecting the most appropriate exercise type according to identified learning needs. It also emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between evaluation and follow-up, which are interrelated yet distinct activities that are essential for learning to occur. Maintaining the momentum of evaluation and follow-up after exercises is important in this regard, as it ensures that the learning process is completed and suggested improvements implemented. This requires making resources available throughout the entire exercise process. By demonstrating a systematic way of conducting exercises, the study provides concrete suggestions for an approach that promotes learning and offers valuable insights into how to design an exercise process that leads to improved learning outcomes.

This study examines how public relations professionals navigate the societal issues presented through disinformation. Findings from in-depth interviews indicate that when it comes to sharing incorrect information, especially on social media, it has significant implications for the PR industry. The study highlights the complexity surrounding disinformation and the importance of establishing intent in distinguishing between misinformation and disinformation. Personal ethics guide professionals in creating truthful storytelling or strategic silence through proactive and reactive strategies to combat disinformation. The study also explores the type of responses used and demonstrates how both proactive and reactive strategies evolve and are executed in practice when dealing with disinformation. Taken together, a conceptual process model is offered as a means to extend theory building in disinformation.

Image crises pose significant challenges for organizations and public figures, often requiring rapid identification and classification to mitigate reputational damage. This study introduces a novel typology of brand crises and demonstrates its application using large language models (LLMs) to enhance crisis detection and classification. We review the current state of knowledge of brand crises and LLMs, underlining their relevance in real-world text analytics tasks. Based on an analysis of 300 actual crisis cases, we propose an original typology that captures various types and causes of crises. Our methodology combines expert data annotation with automatic crisis type annotation using a generative LLM. This approach enables both classification and early detection of crises in media texts. The results demonstrate that the GPT-4-turbo achieved strong performance in distinguishing ideological from nonideological crises (accuracy: 0.903; F1: 0.874), while GPT-5 with a 2-shot prompt and GPT-4o-mini excelled in identifying affected actors (accuracy and F1: 0.984). Performance was comparatively lower for detailed cause classification, highlighting the greater complexity of fine-grained categorizations. This study highlights the potential and limitations of LLMs in developing automated crisis management systems to enhance organizational resilience.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a global state of exception, forcing decision-makers to address unprecedented challenges while balancing legal norms, public health and civil liberties under conditions of uncertainty. This study argues for the importance of proportionality – the principle that crisis measures must be suitable, necessary, and balanced – for maintaining democratic legitimacy during emergencies. To clarify this relationship, this article examines how five Norwegian municipalities exercised discretion under the Infection Control Act § 4-1 and reveals significant variation in local crisis governance. The analysis applies Peters and Pierre's (2016) functionalist model and the proportionality framework and focuses on governance processes rather than hierarchical structures, and on how municipalities handle competing priorities. Through document analysis and interviews, we examine five governance functions: goal selection, resource mobilization, decision-making, implementation, and evaluation, feedback and learning. Municipalities were chosen for representativeness. The findings indicate that local features – specifically geography, tourism, and healthcare capacity – shaped pandemic responses. The analysis highlights tensions between local autonomy and national coordination as well as between efficiency and democratic accountability. Implicitly, proportionality was crucial for legitimate decisions, civil liberties, and accountability. The results can inform debates on democratic legitimacy and the local-national balance in health emergencies and crisis governance in general. The study advances crisis governance theory by showing how local discretion supports adaptation and accountability while deepening our insight into local-national dynamics during emergencies.

When industries face systemic shocks, enterprise risks extend beyond the effects of isolated incidents and propagate through intricate competitive networks. Existing research predominantly addresses risk spillovers initiated by isolated events, such as financial scandals and product recalls, while neglecting the risk spillover effects associated with firms embedded in multi-market competitive networks. This study undertakes an empirical analysis within the context of China's electronic information manufacturing industry. The findings reveal that the broader a firm's product market competition boundary, the more pronounced the peer risk spillover effects it encounters. Furthermore, the degree of product diversification and analyst coverage positively moderate the relationship between competition boundaries and risk spillovers. Firms positioned downstream in the supply chain, those with lower corporate social responsibility performance, and non-state-owned enterprises experience more significant impacts of competition boundary breadth on risk spillovers. This study conceptualizes the boundaries of product market competition as a crucial lens for comprehending industry risk spillovers, thereby advancing risk spillover research from static event analysis to dynamic network analysis. The findings indicate that, in the context of systemic shocks, expansive competition boundaries exacerbate risk contagion through two primary channels: direct business linkages and indirect cognitive biases. This study offers a novel decision-making framework for firms to navigate the balance between market opportunities and risk exposure within intricate competitive environments.

Telecommunications fraud poses a significant and growing risk to Chinese youths. Guided by the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) and the extended parallel process model (EPPM), this study investigates how anti-fraud communication shapes behavioural responses. Through a survey of Chinese youths, we found that anti-fraud information successfully raised their awareness of both the threat and efficacy. However, these two perceptions lead to different coping behaviours. The findings revealed a complex interaction between the perceived threat and the perceived efficacy on behavioural intention. Specifically, perceived threat significantly increased negative fear-control behaviours; however, this tendency was attenuated by perceived efficacy. Conversely, perceived efficacy was a driver of positive danger-control behaviours; however, this effect was diminished by perceived threat. These results extend the application of the SARF and EPPM to modern risk events such as telecommunications fraud. They also suggest that successful anti-fraud campaigns should focus on empowering youths with confidence and methods to protect themselves, thereby effectively stimulating actual protective behaviours.

Disasters frequently exacerbate existing inequalities, particularly affecting adults with physical disabilities who have mobility limitations, thereby heightening their susceptibility to disaster-related disparities. The disaster response capacity of this population may be influenced by psychosocial factors, including social networks and disability acceptance. This study aimed to investigate the mediating role of disability acceptance in the relationship between social network size and disaster response capacity among adults with physical disabilities. This study analyzed secondary data from 1,300 adults with physical disabilities from the 5th Disability and Lifestyle Epidemiology Panel conducted in South Korea. Social network size positively influenced both disability acceptance and disaster response capacity. Furthermore, disability acceptance acted as a mediator in the relationship between social network size and disaster response capacity. These findings indicate that strategies to improve the disaster response capacity of adults with physical disabilities should take their social network size into account while also promoting disability acceptance.

Despite students' vulnerability to natural disasters, the literature addressing their preparedness in high-risk areas remains sparse. This study assessed natural disaster preparedness confidence and pre- and post-training differences among university students in Georgia, United States of America (USA). Pre- and post-surveys were applied to students who participated in a natural disaster preparedness and response (NDPR) training session. A cross-sectional study and bivariate analysis assessed students' confidence based on sociodemographic characteristics, natural disaster experience, NDPR training and implementation, as well as emergency awareness and drills. Pre- and post-test study and Wilcoxon signed-rank test assessed changes in student's views on the training content usefulness, its necessity, the need to implement it to incoming students, the feeling of empowerment, and the desire to discuss NDPR training with other people. Of 186 students, most were White, females, with a median age of 20. Only 44% were confident in their natural disaster preparedness and they were significantly more likely to be males, more willing to take additional no-cost NDPR training, had 4 or more instances of previous natural disaster education, preferred both practical and theoretical trainings, knew basic first aid, felt responsible for their safety, were aware of emergency procedures in university, and were open to collaboration in handling natural disaster emergencies. A small but generally positive change was produced after training completion. These findings identified potential to impact students' resilience and can be used to design more impactful training programmes.

The increasing frequency and intensity of floods exacerbated by climate change and rapid urbanization have underscored the need for effective emergency management systems that promote proactive preparedness. Effective flood risk management necessitates shared responsibility for mitigation among various stakeholders, including communities and individuals, whose active participation is vital for reducing vulnerability and enhancing resilience. This study examines how confidence in government, risk perception and responsibility attribution shape individuals' flood preparedness behaviours. Using survey data from (N = 420) respondents in Accra, Ghana, structural equation modelling was employed to test the proposed relationships. The findings reveal that both confidence in government and risk perception serve as strong and significant predictors of individuals' flood preparedness action. In contrast, personal responsibility was not a significant correlation with flood preparedness actions. However, it did positively affect confidence in the government. Government responsibility was significantly and negatively associated with risk perception. Additionally, higher confidence in the government correlated with lower risk perception. Overall, personal responsibility demonstrated mixed effects on flood preparedness, while confidence in government plays a dual mediating role, linking personal responsibility to risk perception and influencing preparedness outcomes. These findings highlight the intricate interdependencies between confidence in government, risk perception and both personal and governmental attribution of responsibility in shaping flood preparedness behaviour. The study underscores the importance of fostering trust in government and ensuring accurate risk communication to enhance flood resilience. It also contributes to the literature on disaster risk reduction and offers practical insights for policy and communication strategies aimed at improving flood preparedness at the community level.

This study examines how brand activism builds brand trust through two online experiments. Study 1 employed a 2 (crisis: present vs. absent) × 2 (communication strategy: advocacy vs. avoidance) between-subjects design (N = 129). Study 2 used a 2 (crisis: present vs. absent) × 2 (crisis-activism fit: high vs. low) between-subjects design (N = 219), testing ethnocentrism as a moderator. Across both experiments, brand trust, attitude toward brand, and word-of-mouth (WOM) were measured. Study 1 revealed that in noncrisis contexts, advocacy-based activism significantly improved brand trust, attitude toward brand, and WOM compared to avoidance strategies. However, during a crisis, activism showed no significant effect on these outcomes. Study 2 indicated that for patriotism-related crises, high-fit activism enhanced trust, attitude, and WOM among consumers high in ethnocentrism. No such effect occurred for low-ethnocentrism consumers. These findings advance theory by highlighting the context-dependent efficacy of brand activism, the moderating role of consumer ethnocentrism, and the novel concept of crisis-activism fit in patriotism-related crises. Managers should avoid activism as a crisis recovery tool unless aligned with consumer values and the crisis context.