Brooke Liu, Ph.D. Amisha Mehta, Ph.D. The trust factor: Towards a comprehensive model for trust in crisis communication Brooke Liu, Ph.D. Amisha Mehta, Ph.D.

Why Study Trust? 35% trust the government 19% trust the government

Findings: How Trust Defined Interpersonal trust Trust, conceived as “willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party” (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995) Institutional trust "Trust in the organization is conceptualized as stakeholders’ judgment of how much they feel they could trust the organization" (Lee, 2005) Both interpersonal & institutional Trustworthiness is comprised of assessments of an individual or organization's “ability, benevolence, and integrity” (Mehta, Bruns & Newton, 2016) Defined in 33% of 188 articles

Findings: How Trust Conceptualized & Measured Only 22% of 188 articles reviewed employed theory Hostile Media Perception Affect Heuristic Salient Value Model Exemplification Theory Cultural Identity Theory Image Repair Theory Signal Detection Theory OPR Terror Management Theory Social Exchange Theory RISP Attribution Theory Trust Determination Model Social Capital SCCT Uses & Grats ELM/ HSM

Findings: How Trust Conceptualized & Measured Trust in Media “How much do you trust social media as an information source during crises?” (Eriksson, Olsson & Örebro, 2016) Trust in Information "To what extent was the information “factual, distorted, biased, accurate, and knowledgeable” (Frewer, Howard, Hedderley & Shepherd, 1997) Trust in Sources Level of felt trust in government’s “openness, honesty, commitment, caring, concern and competence” (Freimuth et al., 2014)

Findings about Trust Transparent communication influences trust and behavioural intentions (Auger, 2014) Message congruency influences trust in message source (Meijnders et al., 2009) Willingness to share personal information increases trust in group (Blanchard et al., 2011) TRUST

Findings about Trust TRUST In health information influences subsequent information searching (Lee et al., 2016; Ruppel, 2016) In authorities increases likelihood of protective action (Ripberger et al., 2015) Influences behavioural intentions (Cleeren et al., 2008; DiStaso et al., 2015; Spence et al., 2016) In government influences acceptance or support of interventions (Freimuth et al., 2014; Matthews Pillemer et al., 2015) Influences blame or performance evaluations (Griffin et al., 2008; Safford et al., 2013) Can reduce perceptions of likelihood/dread and reduce preparedness intentions (Terpstra, 2011) TRUST

Research Gaps and Next Steps Transdisciplinary approaches required to advance comprehensive model Need for agreement on definition to ensure appropriate measurement Trust and distrust across stages Starting points for model development No centralized theory for trust in risk and crisis communication Trust over time Starting insights about how message content influences trust Trust as a multi-level concept and its role in risk and crisis communication