Toward a global understanding of the effects of the IDEA model for designing instructional risk and crisis messages: A food contamination experiment in Sweden

Abstract

Communicating to publics at risk can be challenging for spokespersons during crises. Knowing what content to include in such messages can be instrumental in achieving effective behavioural results among disparate publics and may differ across cultures. Whereas the IDEA model has demonstrated itself to be an effective framework for designing instructional risk and crisis messages in the United States, this study builds on the conclusions drawn previously by examining the model's utility in Sweden. Results of the experiment confirm that messages constructed according to the IDEA model are effective in Sweden's state‐oriented risk culture, as well. Future research should focus on the model's utility for various risk and crisis types among both Swedish populations and populations in additional countries.

The IDEA Model as a Conceptual Framework for Designing Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) Messages Distributed via Mobile Phone Apps

“…These explanations should be offered by credible sources and the scientific information provided in them be both accurate and translated intelligibly for the target population(s). These messages also must include specific action steps receivers are to take (or not take) for self-protection [2][3][4][5][6][7]. The following paragraphs describe the message design and testing project processes, results, and conclusions based on the timeline under which it unfolded.…”

Pandemic Communication: Information Seeking, Evaluation, and Self-Protective Behaviors in Vietnam and the Republic of Korea

“…In answering RQ2 and completing the answers to RQ's 3 and 4, despite the unanimous use of self-protective behaviors, when it comes to information seeking and evaluation these data demonstrate more evidence of a danger control process in Vietnam compared to the RoK where there was more evidence of a fear control process (see Witte, 1992). These data also suggest that instead of a fear control process being immediately connected to maladaptive behaviors (Witte, 1992) or misinformation processing (Love et al, 2020;Martel et al, 2020), it did depress the amount of information consumed, increased dissatisfaction with information sufficiency (see e.g., Lachlan, et al, 2014;Rains and Ruppel, 2016;Sellnow, et al, 2019), and also risked contributing to uncertainty discrepancy and information equivocality (see e.g., Liu, et al, 2015;Pierre, 2019;Gesser-Edelsburg, et al, 2015). This was evidenced in critical differences in the amount of information seeking, types of information sought, and perceptions of information insufficiency in Vietnam and the RoK.…”

“…Additionally, there were age biases evident in the Vietnam sample as well as education and gender biases across both samples. We would assume these biases would influence results based on previous literature on the individual factors that influence information seeking and evaluation (see e.g., Lachlan, et al, 2014;Sellnow, et al, 2019). Further, because of the outbreak status difference, this study did not directly explore the cultural influences of attitudes about information seeking, evaluation, and self-protective behaviors.…”

“…In fact, the body of research has developed a relatively sophisticated understanding of several aspects of information seeking and evaluation behaviors (see Table 1). A starting point for better understanding and evaluating information seeking and selfprotective behaviors is evaluating the public's subjective knowledge (see e.g., Liu and Jiao, 2018;Sellnow, et al, 2019;Willoughby and Myrick, 2016) because it informs an interpretation of the public's confidence and understanding of the situation. Previous research then establishes that source accessibility likely reduces perceptions of uncertainty by raising confidence in the information seeker's ability to find information when they want it (see e.g., Christensen and Baily, 1997;Liu, et al, 2015;Rains and Ruppel, 2016).…”

Building crisis capacity with data breaches: the role of stakeholder relationship management and strategic communication

“…We argue the focus should be directly on building an organization's capacity, which includes responding, managing, and serving stakeholder interests ahead of crisis (Heath, Lee, & Ni, 2009;Tao & Song, 2020). This approach highlights research findings that pre-crisis instructional messaging demonstrates strong impacts on people's behaviors and attitudes (Johnston & Lane, 2018;Sellnow, Johansson, Sellnow, & Lane, 2019;Zhou & Ki, 2018). As such, it becomes clear that the challenge of data breaches is as much a question of risk management or mitigation as it is post-crisis response.…”