Can an apology change after-crisis user attitude? The role of social media in online crisis management

摘要

Purpose Drawing upon the Elaboration Likelihood Model, the purpose of this paper is to examine how the characteristics of social media moderate the effect of a firm's apology on the attitude of its customers. Design/methodology/approach An online experiment including 360 active users of internet was employed to test the research model. Findings Results revealed that an after-crisis apology and firm reputation both have a positive effect on after-crisis user attitude toward the firm. Furthermore, the positive effect of apology becomes stronger as online media interactivity increases, whereas the positive effect of reputation becomes weaker.Originality/value This study extends the literature on online crisis management and the literature on ELM by highlighting the role of online media interactivity in influencing the persuasive effectiveness of firm's crisis response in the context of social media.