IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jriskr/v20y2017i4p433-444.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Helping behavior in a virtual crisis situation: effects of safety awareness and crisis communication

Author

Listed:
  • H.E. Stubbé
  • M.L. van Emmerik
  • J.H. Kerstholt

Abstract

Incident evaluations show that bystanders tend to help: they do not wait for professionals to arrive, but act as required by the situation at hand. In the present study, we investigated how safety awareness (induced before an accident happened) and providing a course of action by emergency services affect helping behavior after witnessing a virtual accident with two victims. The main task of the participants was to arrive at a job interview in time. Safety awareness was manipulated by the specific organization they went to: either promoting safe traffic or healthy living. The results show that all participants were inclined to help. Participants who were primed towards safe traffic more often called the emergency number, but talked to the victim less often. Participants who had received specific courses of action moved the victim less often. In all, the results clearly indicate the value of effective risk communication (before an event occurs) and crisis communication (after an event has occurred), as both types of information improve the quality of actual helping behavior at the scene.

Suggested Citation

  • H.E. Stubbé & M.L. van Emmerik & J.H. Kerstholt, 2017. "Helping behavior in a virtual crisis situation: effects of safety awareness and crisis communication," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(4), pages 433-444, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:20:y:2017:i:4:p:433-444
    DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2015.1071865
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669877.2015.1071865
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13669877.2015.1071865?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bev J. Holmes & Natalie Henrich & Sara Hancock & Valia Lestou, 2009. "Communicating with the public during health crises: experts' experiences and opinions," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(6), pages 793-807, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chiara Mio & Marco Fasan & Carlo Marcon & Silvia Panfilo, 2022. "Exploring Corporate Crisis Communication after COVID-19: The Role of Enterprise Risk Management in (Re)Building Trust," Working Papers 05, Department of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia.
    2. Alan Kirschenbaum, 2021. "Reducing patient surge: community based social networks as first responders," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 108(1), pages 163-175, August.
    3. Samuel Collins & Thomas James & Holly Carter & Charles Symons & Felicity Southworth & Kerry Foxall & Tim Marczylo & Richard Amlôt, 2021. "Mass Casualty Decontamination for Chemical Incidents: Research Outcomes and Future Priorities," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(6), pages 1-19, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Denise Voci, 2022. "Logos, Ethos, Pathos, Sustainabilitos? About the Role of Media Companies in Reaching Sustainable Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-17, February.
    2. Áine Regan & Monique Raats & Liran Christine Shan & Patrick G. Wall & Áine McConnon, 2016. "Risk communication and social media during food safety crises: a study of stakeholders' opinions in Ireland," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 119-133, January.
    3. Toddi Steelman & Sarah McCaffrey & Anne-Lise Velez & Jason Briefel, 2015. "What information do people use, trust, and find useful during a disaster? Evidence from five large wildfires," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 76(1), pages 615-634, March.
    4. Jiahui Lu & Meishan Zhang & Yan Zheng & Qiyu Li, 2021. "Communication of Uncertainty about Preliminary Evidence and the Spread of Its Inferred Misinformation during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Weibo Case Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(22), pages 1-17, November.
    5. Shasha Li & Xinyu Peng & Ruiqiu Pang & Li Li & Zixuan Song & Hongying Ye, 2021. "Information Preference and Information Supply Efficiency Evaluation before, during, and after an Earthquake: Evidence from Songyuan, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(24), pages 1-28, December.
    6. Kate Holland & R. Warwick Blood & Michelle Imison & Simon Chapman & Andrea Fogarty, 2012. "Risk, expert uncertainty, and Australian news media: public and private faces of expert opinion during the 2009 swine flu pandemic," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(6), pages 657-671, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:20:y:2017:i:4:p:433-444. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJRR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.