The effect of crisis response strategies on emotions

While various research is being conducted on the effectiveness of crisis message strategies in crisis communication, emphasis is also available in the literature that the effects are limited, and should be investigated along with different variables such as emotions. In addition to that, there are recommendations for further research and integration of the forgiveness phenomenon that has been researched in crisis communication over the past decade, which has benefited institutions to maintain longterm relationships. The aim of this research is to uncover the impact of the communicated emotion in crisis messages on consumer forgiveness and emotional forgiveness, as an audience response. In this context, 2x2 between-subjects factorial design (crisis message strategy: apology vs. justification, emotion: sadness vs. no emotion) is conducted. As a result of experiment, in the corporate crisis which crisis responsibility is attributed to the institution, there is a statistical difference between crisis message strategies on harmed consumer's intention to forgive. Consumers who receive an apology message have a higher prosocial intention, which is one of the indicators of their intention to forgive, than those who receive a justification message. Another important finding of the research is that whether or not to communicate emotion, the expression of "deep sadness", in crisis messages has no effect on consumer's intention to forgive and emotional forgiveness. The expression of sadness does not affect the negative emotions of consumers such as anger, does not cause an increase in their positive emotions towards the institution, does not make a difference in their feelings of revenge, does not lead to a prosocial behavioral intention to improve the relational harm between them.