Decision-making during a crisis is affected by several sources of information and prior knowledge, such as factual (statistical) information, narratives of others, and real-time governmental messages. The present study investigated how two types of information (statistics and narratives) influence helping behavior after the occurrence of a traffic accident. We used a scripted crisis scenario in a virtual environment, where several types of behavior could be measured. The main dependent variable was whether participants would move the victim or not. By moving the victim, he would be rescued from a potentially unsafe position (the tilted truck could contain poisonous substances), but moving also entailed a risk of increased injury (according to the statistical information the most likely consequence). Our results indicate that more victims were moved in the narrative condition before an official message was received. Participants who had received statistical information or both types of information performed similar to the control condition. After the official message, informing participants to keep distance, more victims were moved in the narrative condition and in the combined narrative and statistical condition. A narrative therefore has stronger effects when (information about) the actual situation matches the narrative's content. In contrast with our expectations, affective response did not mediate the relationship between narrative information and moving victims. An alternative explanation would be that narratives trigger a more heuristic way of information processing.Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast on 29 August 2005. It was by far the most expensive natural disaster with damages of over $100 billion, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history with over 1200 deaths (Galea et al. 2008). Two days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, local governments spread information about the actual situation and evacuation orders via news broadcasts. As evaluation studies of the incident showed, however, people's decision to evacuate was not only affected by information provided by the government, but also by narratives of relatives and other members of people's social networks (Messias, Barrington, and Lacy 2012).The information that individuals use to make their decision during a crisis is not only from different sources (e.g. government and family), but also of different types. On the one hand, official information ARTICLE HISTORY

This study aimed to gain insight into the interplay between citizens’ reactions on Twitter and governmental communications as well as their effects on self‐reliant behaviour and trust. Two experimental studies were conducted. In Study 1, participants first received other citizens’ reactions followed by the government's communications about how to act. Participants received supporting, opposing, mixed, or no reactions from other citizens. In Study 2, participants first received the government's communications with either certain or uncertain crisis information, followed by the different citizens’ reactions. The results showed that citizens’ reactions via Twitter are not necessarily detrimental to the effectiveness of governmental communications regarding self‐reliant behaviour. In addition, our findings suggest being careful with providing uncertain governmental communications during a crisis.

In this paper we investigated to what extent the willingness of people to take advice from the local government, people's feelings of collective efficacy and empowerment, and their relationship with the local government, is dependent on whether the local government was accountable for the crisis or not. In addition, we were interested in the influence of empathic versus neutral crisis information on people's behavior, feelings and their relationship with the local government. The results indicate that people's intention to follow the advice of the local government is generally high, even when the local government is held accountable for the crisis. However, accountability negatively influenced people's relationship with the local government, as well as collective efficacy. Our research shows that this negative outcome for people's relationship with the local government cannot be countered by empathic crisis information. However, conveying empathic concern in the crisis information did enhance level of collective efficacy.

This study aimed to gain insight into the (combined) effects of risk and crisis communication on adequate behaviour during a crisis situation. In addition, it adds to the existing literature by examining the effects of risk and crisis communication on psychological factors that are involved in decision-making during a crisis. This study, utilizing a virtual environment, was a 3 (risk communication: risk information vs. risk information with course of action vs. control) 3 2 (crisis communication: with recommended behaviours vs. without recommended behaviours) between subjects design. Both risk and crisis communication supported adequate behaviour in a crisis situation. In addition, through risk communication, participants had less affective reactions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. 1 Deciding to help: effects of risk and crisis communication E ven though a lot is invested in highly sophisticated emergency and disaster management systems, ordinary citizens are usually the first responders when an emergency occurs. These citizens are already present at the scene, and it takes some time before emergency services arrive (Prati, Catufi & Pietrantoni, 2012; Whittaker, McLennan & Handmer, 2015). As they are at the scene, citizens can directly help victims and mitigate negative consequences of the situation at hand (Whittaker et al., 2015). However, not every individual may be able to provide help in an adequate way due to limited knowledge and skills, and actions may not always be optimal given the situation at hand (Fernandez, Barbera & van Dorp, 2006; Hur, 2012). Citizen participation on emergency and disaster sites is inevitable, so governments and crisis management organizations should integrate the help of ordinary citizens in mitigation, adaptation, or emergency management and recovery plans (Hoss, Klima & Fischbeck, 2014). This is necessary to reduce the risk that untrained and uncoordinated citizens provide help that is not adequate for the specific emergency (Whittaker et al., 2015). A way to guide adequate behaviour during crises is by risk and crisis communication (Vihalemm, Kiisel & Harro-Loit, 2012). While risk communication is mainly focused on increasing risk awareness before a crisis occurs, crisis communication is focused on communication during a crisis to prevent or reduce the negative consequences of a crisis (Coombs, 1999; Seeger, 2006). As noted by Sellnow, Lane, Littlefield, Sellnow, Wilson, Beauchamp and Venette (2015), effective communication to elicit appropriate actions both before and during a crisis should not be sender-focused, but receiver-focused. In order to adjust information to receiver needs, it is important to understand how citizens interpret and respond to these messages and how it relates to citizen behaviour during a crisis. Although there is a lot of literature on risk and crisis communication as separate research lines, little is known about the interaction between the two types of communication (Reynolds & Seeger, 2005; Steelman & McCaffrey, 2013). Recen...