1. 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.

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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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)

6. 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

7. Findings about Trust TRUST
In health information influences subsequent information searching (Lee et al., 2016; Ruppel, )
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, )
TRUST

8. 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