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PUBREL-1289; No. of Pages 10 ARTICLE IN PRESS

Public Relations Review xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Public Relations Review
Scale development for measuring publics’ emotions in

organizational crises
Yan Jin a,∗ , Brooke Fisher Liu b , Deepa Anagondahalli b , Lucinda Austin c
a
Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia, United States
b
Department of Communication, University of Maryland, United States
c
School of Communications, Elon University, United States
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Although publics’ emotional responses have gained increasing importance in crisis commu-
Received 18 August 2013 nication research, reliable scales measuring crisis emotions specific to organizational crises
Received in revised form 15 April 2014 are lacking. As the first study developing a multiple-item scale for measuring publics’ crisis
Accepted 19 April 2014
emotions, this study examines the conceptualization and operationalization of attribution-
independent crisis emotions versus attribution-dependent crisis emotions by employing
Keywords:
two survey data sets (N = 490) for scale development and testing. Results indicate that three
Crisis types of emotions are likely to be felt by publics when exposed to organizational crises:
Emotion (1) attribution-independent (AI) crisis emotions; (2) external-attribution-dependent (EAD)
Measurement crisis emotions; and (3) internal-attribution-dependent (IAD) crisis emotions. The scale’s
Attribution reliability, factorial structure, and validity are further assessed. The findings confirm that the
underlying processes of publics’ emotions felt in crisis situations are different from those
felt in non-crisis situations. Consequently, this scale provides a valid and reliable psycho-
metric tool for researchers and crisis managers to measure publics’ different emotions that
are relevant to a crisis situation, as a result of crisis attribution appraisal.
© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Crises create high-stakes situations where organizations need to consider their publics’ emotional wellbeing prior to
addressing financial losses and mitigating blame (Coombs, 2012). Yet, most crisis research ignores the emotional impact of
crises, focusing instead on attribution of responsibility (Jin, Pang, & Cameron, 2012). Scholars from the conflict communica-
tion management discipline have highlighted the importance of understanding how emotions and conflicts are intertwined
(e.g., Lindner, 2006; Oetzel and Ting-Toomey, 2006). However this has yet to be explored in crisis and risk communication
research. Although there is some overlap between crisis and risk communication, they address different concerns. Risk com-
munication focuses on making people aware of risks, how to avoid them, and what to do to reduce the associated threat or
danger (Wilcox & Cameron, 2005). Crisis communication addresses the need for organizations to choose the most appro-
priate response to protect their reputation (Heath & Coombs, 2006). Scholars have recognized the need to address emotions
in crisis decision-making (Coombs & Holladay, 2005; Pfau & Wan, 2006; Turner, 2006; Wang, 2006). However, this link has
not been systematically examined to understand what triggers certain emotions or the implications of experiencing such
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 573 529 3165.

E-mail addresses: yanjin@uga.edu (Y. Jin), bfliu@umd.edu (B.F. Liu), danagond@umd.edu (D. Anagondahalli), laustin@elon.edu (L. Austin).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.04.007
0363-8111/© 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Jin, Y., et al. Scale development for measuring publics’ emotions in organizational crises.
Public Relations Review (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2014.04.007
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2 Y. Jin et al. / Public Relations Review xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
emotions (e.g., Coombs, 1998, 1999; Jin, 2010; Jin & Pang, 2010). The importance of understanding and measuring publics’
emotions in the sphere of crisis communication, therefore, needs to be firmly established.
Although emotion-related research is relatively new to the crisis communication field, risk communication research has
established a framework to understand the role of emotion in risk situations (e.g., Lerner & Keltner, 2000, 2001; Lerner,
Gonzalez, Small, & Fischhoff, 2003; Slovic, 1987; Turner, Rimal, Morrison, & Kim, 2006; Wang, 2006). To date, however,
risk and crisis researchers have conceptualized and operationalized publics’ crisis emotions by employing discrete emo-
tion measures from social psychology, such as Izard’s (1977) differential emotions scale (DES) and the primary negative
emotions Lazarus (1991) identified. Although the foundation laid by crisis researchers has provided a useful starting point
for investigation, the question of whether publics’ emotions felt in organizational crisis situations are different from those
felt in consumption experiences or other non-crisis situations is yet to be addressed theoretically and empirically. Further
evidence is needed to help crisis researchers make better choices in selecting emotion measurements specifically relevant to
communicating in crisis situations. Therefore, this study: (1) defines crisis emotions, (2) proposes structural dimensions of
crisis emotions based on existing crisis communication theoretical frameworks and two additional surveys, and (3) develops
a crisis emotion inventory that specifically pertains to understanding publics’ emotions evoked by crisis situations, which
is then further tested and verified via the survey data.
2. Conceptualization of crisis emotions
Lazarus (1982, 1991, 1999) and Lazarus and Folkman (1984) pioneered the integrated cognitive-based emotion research
stream, and defined emotions as “organized cognitive-motivational-relational configurations whose status changes with
changes in the person–environment relationship as this is perceived and evaluated (appraisal)” (1991, p. 38). According
to Lazarus, emotion is a mental state of readiness formed as a response to the appraisal of the environment and one’s
own thoughts. Lazarus’ Cognitive-Motivational-Relational Theory of Emotions deals with “what one must think to feel a given
emotion” (1999, p. 90). Aligning with this approach to emotion research, the cognitive appraisal construct has been the
central concept in the appraisal theory of emotion development (e.g., Smith & Ellsworth, 1985; Tiedens & Linton, 2001).
Within this research stream, Lerner and Keltner (2000) introduced the “appraisal-tendency” approach, which posited, “each
emotion activates a cognitive appraisal dimension that triggered the emotion” (p. 477). It also implies that discrete emotions
are generated by different cognitive appraisal outcomes.
This cognitive appraisal oriented definition of emotions continues to be employed by leading crisis researchers (e.g.,
Jin, 2009, 2010; Jin & Cameron, 2004, 2007; Jin & Pang, 2010; Jin, Pang, & Cameron, 2007, Jin, Pang, & Cameron, 2010; Jin
et al., 2012). Grounded in Lazarus’ (1991) cognitive appraisal theory, Jin et al. (2007, 2012) explored crisis emotions in their
Integrated Crisis Mapping (ICM) model, an audience-driven, situational crisis communication framework, examining what
is going on in the “black box” of communication. Jin et al. (2007, 2012) as well as other crisis researchers (e.g., Choi & Lin,
2009; Jin, Liu, & Austin, 2014) advocated that developing effective crisis responses lies in a deeper understanding of human
emotions and how they are integrated with cognitive processes and crisis responsibility attribution.
2.1. Situational appraisal and publics’ primary emotions in crises
Lazarus (1991) proposed that there are two types of appraisal: primary appraisal and secondary appraisal. Primary
appraisal addresses whether and how a situation is relevant to one’s wellbeing. Primary appraisal’s components include:
(1) goal relevance: If an event is relevant to an individual’s personal goals, an emotion is generated; if not, an emotion will
not be generated (Lazarus, 1991); (2) goal congruence or incongruence: If the goal is congruent with one’s well being, the
consequent event will be evaluated as positive. If the goal is incongruent with one’s well being, then negative emotions will
be elicited (Lazarus, 1991); and (3) engagement of the party, which refers to how much the other party (other individuals
or agents) is contributing, responsible, and involved in the event (Lazarus, 1991). In the processing of emotion from publics’
point of view, the central crisis issue is always goal relevance, as a crisis event is relevant to individual or collective goals
for safety and well-being (Jin et al., 2007). Jin et al. (2007) further pointed out that publics and organizations involved in
the same crisis are likely to have different perspectives of how the crisis is relevant to their goals. For example, in a product
recall crisis, the primary goal of affected individuals is product safety and personal health, whereas, the primary goal of the
manufacturer may be to minimize the immediate financial loss due to the recall and to mitigate the short-term impact of
the crisis on the market value of its stock, before prioritizing concerns for customers and organizational image.
Secondary appraisal refers to an evaluation of one’s options and resources for coping with the situation and future
prospects of one’s well being (Lazarus, 1991). This form of appraisal includes assessing whether action is required, and, if so,
what kind of action ought to be taken. This process involves three components: blame or credit (i.e., the accountability for
what happened [Lazarus, 1991]), coping potential (i.e., whether an individual chooses to be problem-focused or emotion-
focused when it comes to how he or she copes with or adapts to the situation [Lazarus, 1991]), and future expectancy (i.e.,
whether and how an individual expects to respond to the situation [Lazarus, 1991]). As Jin et al. (2007) pointed out, in a crisis
situation, blame takes precedence over credit. In addition, publics’ coping potential, whether and how individuals expect to
respond to a crisis situation, determines actions that publics or the organization might take to prevent harm. Publics’ coping
potential is also associated with how an organization manages the demands of the crisis situation, whether the strategy is
feasible, and what result is expected (Jin et al., 2007).
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Y. Jin et al. / Public Relations Review xxx (2014) xxx–xxx 3
Both positive and negative emotions are relevant to understanding publics’ affective responses in crisis situations, which
in turn are closely linked to crisis responsibility judgment, rational trust, and willingness to seek information (Kim &
Niederdeppe, 2013). In the following section, we examine both negative and positive primary crisis emotions as identified
in existing crisis communication literature.
Based on the cognitive appraisal model of emotion, Jin et al. (2007) proposed understanding primary publics’ crisis
responses through the predominant emotions elicited by different crisis types. In a crisis, Lazarus (1991) identified six pre-
dominant negative emotions (anger, fright, anxiety, guilt, shame, and sadness) based upon different appraisals of situations
and driven by different core relational themes as cognitive outcomes of the appraisal. For the purpose of understanding
organization–public communication, Jin et al. (2012) found that four of the six negative emotions (anger, fright, anxiety,
and sadness) tend to be dominant emotions experienced by publics in organizational crisis situations. In crisis situations,
these four primary negative emotions were also found to play significant mediator roles between crisis responsibility and
relational trust and willingness to seek information from an organization involved in the crisis (Kim & Niederdeppe, 2013).
In terms of anger, the underlying core relational theme is a demanding offense, caused by the situation, against “me”
and “mine” (Lazarus, 1991). “We get angry when we feel hurt,” (Lindner, 2006, p. 275) and we react with anger when we
believe “the other person, either through neglect or intentionally, treats us with disrespect” (Lindner, 2006, p. 275). Cahn
and Abigail (2007) identified anger and stress as the primary factors that contribute to the escalation of conflict. The ego-
involvement of the publics can preserve or enhance their identity in the situation. Lerner et al. (2003) reported that anger
was high in risk situations of high perceived certainty and control, or where publics were familiar with the risk situation
and believed that the risk situation could have been controlled. Anger was also found to increase as perceptions of crisis
responsibility intensified (Coombs & Holladay, 2005). Jin’s (2009, 2010) experiments found that publics tend to experience
anger when facing a demanding offense from an organization against them or their wellbeing. Further, Kim and Cameron’s
(2011) experiment revealed that anger-inducing emotional news frames affect publics’ emotional response to corporate
crises: People exposed to anger-inducing crisis news read the news less closely and had more negative attitudes toward the
company than those exposed to sadness-inducing news.
The core relational theme underlying fright is facing an uncertain and existential threat (Lazarus, 1991), and fright is often
used interchangeably with fear (Kim & Niederdeppe, 2013). Lerner et al. (2003) found fear to be a result of perceived low
risk controllability and certainty. In crisis situations, publics are not sure about how to cope with the uncertainty triggered
by the crisis or how the organization will handle the situation. Depending on their resources and power, publics may choose
avoidance or escape from the crisis as a viable recourse.
By definition, anxiety stems from the core relational theme of facing an immediate, concrete, and overwhelming danger
(Lazarus, 1991). Publics may feel overwhelmed by the crisis situation and look for immediate solutions. Jin et al. (2012)
reported anxiety as the default emotion experienced by publics across crisis situations, along with other emotions such as
anger, sadness, and fright depending on the levels of perceived organizational engagement and publics’ conative coping in
terms of taking actions to deal with the stress or consequence caused by a crisis.
The core relational theme of the emotion sadness is the experience of an irrevocable loss (Lazarus, 1991). In such cases,
publics have suffered a tangible or intangible loss. Consequently, publics’ collective goal of crisis survival is threatened.
Publics may have no one to blame due to uncontrollable causes and consequently find themselves in desperate need for
relief and comfort. In studying the role of sadness in publics’ responses to crisis news framing and corporate crisis responses,
Kim and Cameron (2011) found that people exposed to sadness-inducing crisis news read the news more closely and had
fewer negative attitudes toward the company than those exposed to anger-inducing news.
Other negative crisis emotions examined by researchers include alarm, contempt, disgust, confusion, apprehension, embar-
rassment, guilt, surprise, and shame (e.g., Choi & Lin, 2009; Liu & Kim, 2011), based on the discrete emotions identified by social
psychologists (e.g., Frijda, Kuipers, & Schure, 1989; Izard, 1977). Confusion and alarm, along with fear and sadness, were
found to be the most frequently incorporated emotions in organizational crisis responses during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic
across both traditional and social media (Liu & Kim, 2011).
In addition to negative emotions, positive emotions such as hope (Jin, Park, & Len-Ríos, 2010), relief (Choi & Lin, 2009; Liu
& Kim, 2011), and sympathy (Coombs & Holladay, 2005; Jeong, 2010; Kim & Niederdeppe, 2013) have also been examined
by researchers in the context of crisis communication. Among the positive emotions examined, sympathy, sometimes used
interchangeably with compassion in crises (Kim & Niederdeppe, 2013), has emerged as a primary potential positive emotion.
According to Salovey and Rosenhan (1989), sympathy occurs when “[a]wareness of others’ suffering elicits feelings of
sympathy, especially when the suffering is seen as undeserved” (p. 637). During crises, sympathy can be toward crisis victims
and/or an organization. Publics’ sympathy toward an organization was found to vary as a function of causal attribution and
crisis response (Lee, 2004). Sympathy involves an increased sensitivity to, and understanding of, the feelings of the other
(Gruen & Mendelsohn, 1986), as well as a certain detachment from the situation (Iyer & Oldmeadow, 2006). Therefore, in
order to experience sympathy for a victim, publics need to be able to cognitively separate themselves from the victim’s
circumstances (Wispe, 1986). Given this definition, sympathy is very likely to be felt among non-victims when exposed
to the description of a crisis they are not directly involved in, but in which victims’ suffering is witnessed and depicted.
Sympathy was found to predict public support for Haitian earthquake victims (Jeong, 2010), and was associated with crisis
responsibility attribution: stronger attribution reduced feelings of sympathy toward an organization (Coombs & Holladay,
2005). Sympathy was the only positive emotion that organizations frequently incorporated in responses across all media
types during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic (Liu & Kim, 2011).
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2.2. Attribution and the grouping of publics’ crisis emotions
Research indicates that publics seek out social media because it uniquely provides emotional support during crises (e.g.,
Choi & Lin, 2009; Jin & Liu, 2010). The type of emotional support publics receive from all crisis information sources can
directly influence their perceptions of crisis response strategies (Coombs & Holladay, 2005) as well as how publics deal
with their feelings evoked by crisis situations (Jin, 2009, 2010). This is especially relevant because high crisis responsibility
has been found to be associated not only with negative publics’ emotions (Choi & Lin, 2009; McDonald, Sparks, & Glendon,
2010), but also with crisis engagement (McDonald et al., 2010; Yang, Kang, & Johnson, 2010). For example, Utz, Schultz,
and Glocka (2013) found that higher levels of anger were reported in situations when organizations were perceived to have
intentionally caused a crisis than in situations when organizations were perceived as victims who suffered from a crisis.
Further, specific emotions have been tied to undesirable crisis outcomes. For example, anger has been found to predict
reduced purchase intentions and negative word-of-mouth communication (Coombs, 2006, 2007). Fear leads to negative
word-of-mouth communication for crises that have internal causes (McDonald et al., 2010). For these reasons, it is important
to understand the relationship between attributions and emotions.
Toward this end, Choi and Lin (2009) proposed two types of emotions: attribution independent emotions and attribution
dependent emotions, both identified in understanding affective components of the situational crisis communication theory
(SCCT), as outcomes of how publics attribute crisis responsibility. Situational Crisis Communication theory (SCCT) (see
Coombs, 2006) takes an audience-centered approach to understanding how publics will react in crisis situations by surveying
their attribution of crisis responsibility and assessment of crisis types. Embedded in the SCCT framework, this grouping
of crisis emotions is based on the two types of emotions that Weiner (1986) originally proposed in attribution theory:
emotions resulting from the outcome of an event itself but not the cause of the outcome (causal attribution independent)
versus emotions resulting from the cause of the outcome (causal attribution dependent). Attribution dependent emotions
are most likely to occur when the outcome evaluation is negative, unexpected, or important, as a result of seeking the cause
of the negative outcome. The two types of crisis emotions (attribution independent and attribution dependent) can coexist
in the crisis communication context (Choi & Lin, 2009; Weiner, 1986): In addition to initial or general affective responses
(attribution independent emotions) to what happened (the outcome of the crisis), publics are likely to search for attribution,
thus eliciting attribution dependent emotions.
Choi and Lin (2009) suggested emotions such as anger and contempt are likely elicited from the attribution process. In
addition, according to the cognitive appraisal theory (e.g., Lazarus, 1991), other types of emotions (such as fear) without
clear direction of attribution or blame may be categorized as attribution-independent crisis emotions. Choi and Lin (2009)
further suggested the need for research about whether crisis emotions may change as a function of crisis type, depending
on the locus of control (internal or external) and attribution of crisis responsibility.
In proposing the Social-Mediated Crisis Communication (SMCC) model, Liu, Jin, Briones, and Kuch (2012) argued that
crisis researchers should examine crisis origin, which defines whether the crisis was initiated by an internal organizational
issue or from an issue external to the organization. Crisis origin is therefore directly related to the attribution of responsi-
bility. External crisis origin is associated with low organizational responsibility attribution; whereas, internal crisis origin is
associated with high organizational responsibility attribution.
For attribution-independent emotions such as fear, Jin (2009) found that low perceived crisis controllability and high
uncertainty contributed to more feelings of fright. Jin (2009, 2010) also suggested that publics tended to feel more anxiety,
another type of attribution-independent emotion, when they perceived the crisis situation as uncertain yet somewhat
controllable.
For attribution-dependent emotions, anger has been studied extensively in crisis communication (Coombs & Holladay,
2005). For example, Turner (2006) found that anger can motivate people to take control of a situation and ameliorate the
problem at hand from a behavioral perspective. Reports of felt anger were also found to increase as perceptions of crisis
responsibility increased (Coombs & Holladay, 2005). As McDonald et al. (2010) summarized, internal controllable crises
usually resulted in publics’ anger.
Jin et al. (2014) selected nine negative emotions based on crisis emotions literature (e.g., Choi & Lin, 2009; Jin, 2009,
2010) to investigate the likelihood of feeling each of the selected emotions in different organizational crisis situations. The
results rendered three, instead of two, clusters of crisis emotions: (1) attribution-independent (AI) emotions, consisting of
anxiety, apprehension, and fear; (2) external-attribution-dependent (EAD) emotions, consisting of disgust, contempt, and
anger; and (3) internal-attribution-dependent (IAD) emotions, consisting of embarrassment, guilt, and shame. The first two
clusters of crisis emotions were in accordance with Choi and Lin’s (2009) argument of grouping crisis emotions as attribution
dependent and independent ones. The third cluster also suggested a process of crisis attribution. However, unlike emotions
in the second cluster that implied how individuals felt about an organization involved in a given crisis, emotions in the third
cluster indicated how individuals felt about themselves as publics associated with a given organization, after learning about
the crisis situation.
Therefore, based on the crisis attribution theoretical framework, the indices of attribution-independent (AI) emotions
and attribution-dependent (including both EAD and IAD) emotions could be used as the crisis emotions measures. For the
attribution-dependent cluster, crisis emotions can be further explicated according to the direction of the attribution, whether
the attribution is internal (how publics feel about themselves as associated with the organizational crisis) or external (how
publics feel toward an organization in crisis).
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As a first step of scale development for emotions experienced in organizational crisis situations, this study focused on how
to measure crisis emotions as felt by publics when exposed to crises. Specifically, the study examined: (1) emotions publics
report feeling toward a crisis situation (i.e., what happened in the crisis); (2) emotions publics feel about an organization in
a crisis; and (3) emotions publics feel for themselves as publics involved in a crisis.
3. Method and scale development
The initial pool of emotions for the crisis emotion scale was generated after reviewing relevant literature. The negative
emotions were drawn from Choi and Lin’s (2009) content analysis of consumer crisis responses and emotion types, Jin’s
(2010) experiment on crisis appraisal and coping preference, Jin, Pang, et al.’s (2010) content analysis on crisis mapping, and
McDonald et al.’s (2010) experiment on publics’ reactions to company crisis communication. A set of 13 discrete emotions
was generated from this analysis: anger, anxiety, apprehension, confusion, contempt, disgust, embarrassment, fear, guilt, sadness,
shame, surprise, and sympathy.
3.1. Item reduction and reliability testing
For further analysis involving scale purification and reliability testing for the 13 items, data were collected via a Web
survey of a random sample drawn from a participant pool system at a large East Coast university of the United States. As
one of the most important publics of higher education institutions, college students’ perceptions of their university during
university crises and their support of the university are critical (Jin, Park, et al., 2010; Sung & Yang, 2008).
A total of 162 participants received six fictitious university crisis scenarios: (1) bomb threat, (2) riots, (3) blizzard, (4)
disease outbreak, (5) embezzlement, and (6) violent partying. The six scenarios were generated from 22 pre-test, in-person
interviews, which reflected the types of university-related crises with which students identified. A pre-test of 128 college
students ensured that the scenarios were clearly written. Multiple crisis scenarios were used to ensure that the factor
structure of crisis emotions rendered in this study would generalize across a variety of crisis situations.
In all scenarios, the organization was the university where the participants attended school. The presentation order of
these stimuli was randomized. After each scenario, a total of 13 emotions were listed for the participants to provide their
assessment of the likelihood of feeling each emotion by asking “what happened in the situation made me feel. . .” measured
on a 7-point Likert-type scale where “1 = Very Unlikely and 7 = Very Likely.”
As an initial reduction method, analyses of item distributions were examined, aiming at eliminating highly skewed and
unbalanced distributions due to insufficient information, limited variability, and highly unstable correlational results (Clark
& Watson, 1995). The frequency tables indicated a normal distribution for all 13 items included in the scale.
Factor analysis (FA) instead of principal component analysis (PCA) was used to generate a theoretical solution uncontam-
inated by unique and error variability as well as on the basis of an underlying crisis emotion construct that is expected to
produce scores on the indicator items. Therefore, only the variance that each observed variable shares with other observed
variables is available for analysis (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). All items were scored using a seven-point Likert format with
higher scores representing the stronger likelihood of feeling a discrete emotion. Prior to data analysis, the Kaiser-Meyer
Olkin (KMO) test of sampling adequacy and the Bartlett test of sphericity were used to determine the appropriateness of
factor analysis (Kaiser & Rice, 1974). The KMO level of .88 and the significance of the Bartlett test (.00) indicated that factor
analysis was appropriate for the data (Kaiser & Rice, 1974).
Taking into consideration that the possible factors themselves may be correlated (Comrey, 1988), Principal Axis Factoring
with Promax Rotation (used when correlation between factors are expected theoretically), was performed next on the 13
crisis emotion items. Three factors were generated. Items having factor loadings of less than .40 with the other items of
their respective subscales, considered poor (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001), were eliminated. As a result, two items (confusion
and surprise) failed to exhibit simple structure on any factor and were deleted. Corrected item-total correlations were again
calculated with no item deleted. Follow-up factor analyses on the remaining items suggested an 11-item scale with three
underlying factors representing clusters of crisis emotions likely to be felt by publics in organizational crisis situations (see
Table 1): Factor 1 is AI crisis emotions, including anxiety, fear, apprehension, and sympathy. Factor 2 is IAD crisis emotions,
including guilt, embarrassment, and shame. Factor 3 is EAD crisis emotions, including disgust, contempt, anger, and sadness.
The resulting subscales demonstrated internal consistency: ˛ = 88 (four items for AI: anxiety, fear, apprehension, and
sympathy); ˛ = .92 (three items for IAD: guilt, embarrassment, and shame); and ˛ = .86 (four items for EAD: disgust, contempt,
anger, and sadness). The results matched recommendations for a coefficient alpha benchmark of .80 (e.g., Clark & Watson,
1995). In addition, the inter-item correlations were moderate in magnitude within factor, successfully avoiding attenuation
problems in scale development, which refer to situations when “increasing the internal consistency of a test beyond a
certain point will not enhance its construct validity and, in fact, may occur at the expense of validity. One reason for this is
that strongly intercorrelated items are highly redundant: Once one of them is included in the scale, the other(s) contribute
virtually no incremental information” (Clark & Watson, 1995, p. 316). The results indicate that the 11-item instrument
measuring publics’ crisis emotions satisfied internal consistency within each factor and the subscales for each cluster of
emotions were reasonable and parsimonious.
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Table 1
Structural analysis in enactments of publics’ crisis emotions.
Factor Items Factor loadings

EFAa CFAb
Factor 1 Anxiety .96 .90

Attribution-independent (AI) Fear .82 .84
Crisis emotions Apprehension .78 .86
Sympathy .65 .75
Factor 2 Guilt .93 .90

Internal-attribution-dependent (IAD) Embarrassment .90 .89
Crisis emotions Shame .83 .89
Factor 3 Disgust .90 .84

External-attribution-dependent (EAD) Contempt .82 .81
Crisis emotions Anger .77 .85
Sadness .52 .62
a
Exploratory factor analysis using principal axis factoring with Promax Rotation with Kaiser normalization. Factor loadings of values less than .40 were
suppressed. Coefficients of internal consistency are .88, .92, and .86, respectively.
b
Confirmatory factor analysis via LISREL and a Maximum likelihood criterion: three-factor oblique model, Comparative Fit Index = .96, Non-Normal Fit
Index = .95, Normed Fit Index = .96. Coefficients of internal consistency are .90, .93, and .90, respectively.
3.2. Confirmatory factor analysis
A second Web survey was conducted to generate data for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), a sophisticated technique
used in the advanced stages of theory testing that reveals underlying latent processes (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). A random
sample (N = 328) was drawn from a participant pool system at the same large East Coast University. Participants received the
same six fictitious university crisis situation scenarios used in the first survey, with the presentation order randomized. After
each scenario, similar to the first survey, a total of 11 emotions were listed for the participants to provide their likelihood of
feeling each of these emotions by asking “what happened in the situation made me feel. . .” measured on a 7-point Likert-type
scale where “1 = Very Unlikely and 7 = Very Likely.”
Confirmatory factor analysis of this three-factor, 11-item oblique model (allowing the factors to co-vary) was examined
using LISREL (version 8.8) to evaluate the adequacy of the hypothesized factor structure, which demonstrated satisfactory
fit of the data. Maximum likelihood estimation was employed. The extent to which an estimated model fits the observed
data (item variance and covariance) was indicated by a variety of goodness-of-fit indices: 2 (41, N = 1972) = 1005.57, p = .00,
Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .11, which was higher than the acceptable good fit cut-off of .06 (Hu
& Bentler, 1999), and Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .96; SRMR = .07. The data indicated a reasonable fit to the hypothesized
three-factor oblique model.
Further, the proposed model was compared with rival models (Morgan & Hunt, 1994), in order to verify which model
had the optimal fit with the proposed theory. The three-factor (3Factor) model (as reported by Jin et al. (2014) and by the
exploratory analysis in study one) was compared to the two-factor (2Factor) model (as reported by Choi and Lin (2009)).
Specifically, the 3Factor oblique model (where the factors were allowed to co-vary) was compared with four alternative
models to determine the number of underlying latent variables and the relationship among these latent constructs: a three-
factor orthogonal model (where the factors were not allowed to co-vary); a two-factor oblique model, a two-factor orthogonal
model, and a single-factor model. For model comparison, the Akaike Information Criteron (AIC) was used to select the best
fitting model, given its theoretical advantages in measuring relative goodness of fit (Burnham & Anderson, 2002). The null
model served as a basis of reference for computing goodness-of-fit indices for the four competing models. CFI is specified
here as it is a rigorous fit index considering all relevant issues such as sample size, estimation method effects, effects of
violation of normality, and independence, according to Bentler and Bonnett (1980). The null model assumes no common
variance among the 10 indicator items.
Results indicated that the three-factor oblique model (see Fig. 1) appeared to fit the data best (CFI = .96), compared to
the three-factor orthogonal model (CFI = .92), the two-factor oblique model (CFI = .85), the two-factor orthogonal model
(CFI = .82), and the single-factor model (CFI = .72). For model comparison, the three-factor oblique model, among its compet-
ing models, provided the smallest AIC value and RMSEA: (AIC = 982.46, RMSEA = .11), compared to the three-factor orthogonal
model (AIC = 2122.49, RMSEA = .31), the two-factor oblique model (AIC = 4757.35, RMSEA = .12), the two-factor orthogonal
model (AIC = 5164.33, RMSEA = .27), and the single-factor model (AIC = 9765.28, RMSEA = .15). Although the modification
indices suggested changes, these changes were not incorporated, either because they did not significantly change the fit of
the model or because there was insufficient theoretical evidence to warrant the changes.
4. Discussion and implications
Although publics’ emotional responses have gained increasing importance in crisis communication research and discrete
emotions have been identified from existing social psychological literature (e.g., Izard, 1977; Lazarus, 1991), no crisis
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Fig. 1. The three-factor oblique model with standardized loadings. Note: ATTNIND, attribution independent; ATTNDINT, attribution dependent – internal;
ATTNDEXT, attribution dependent – external.
communication study has applied an emotional response scale that validly and reliably measures publics’ reported
emotions evoked by an organizational crisis situation. This study is therefore the first in the field of crisis communication
to develop a scale for measuring publics’ emotions in organizational crisis based on the crisis emotion principles and the
statistical procedures of psychometrics, which advances emotional theories in crisis communication (Jin & Pang, 2010) at
the measurement level.
Although discrete crisis emotions can be categorized by valence such as negative or positive (Kim & Niederdeppe, 2013),
the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses reported here reveal that attribution, rather than valence, seems to be
the fundamental factor for grouping different crisis emotions, regardless of whether they are negative or positive. Building
upon the two types of crisis emotions identified by Choi and Lin (2009), attribution-independent and attribution dependent
emotions, this study further explicated this construct and identified two different types of attribution-dependent emotions:
IAD versus EAD emotions. These three clusters of crisis emotions are: (1) attribution-independent (AI) emotions, consisting
of anxiety, apprehension, and fear; (2) external-attribution-dependent (EAD) emotions, consisting of disgust, contempt, and
anger; and (3) internal-attribution-dependent (IAD) emotions, consisting of embarrassment, guilt, and shame.
Further, this systematic scale development and psychometric assessment procedure provides a valid and reliable scale
with three clusters of enactments of publics’ crisis emotions in terms of AI crisis emotions (four items of anxiety, fear,
apprehension, and sympathy), IAD crisis emotions (three items of guilt, embarrassment, and shame), and EAD crisis emotions
(four items of disgust, contempt, anger, and sadness). The three factors capture the domain of publics’ crisis emotions in
organizational crisis situations.
According to Choi and Lin’s (2009) findings, anger, fear, and contempt were categorized as attribution-dependent emo-
tions, based on their significant association with crisis responsibility. However, this study, grounded in both attribution and
cognitive appraisal frameworks of emotion research, reveals that anger, fear, and contempt might be categorized into differ-
ent crisis emotion clusters. Although anger and contempt are categorized as EAD emotions, fear is more AI. This is important
for crisis managers to consider when recommending organizational responses to publics affected by a crisis. On the one
hand, if the dominant emotions experienced by publics are anger and contempt, it is likely that they hold the organization
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responsible for the crisis situation, which may warrant more accommodative organizational responses. On the other hand,
if the dominant emotion expressed by publics is fear, it indicates that the crisis responsibility is unclear to publics, which
might provide opportunities for the organization to provide a more proactive role to facilitate and collaborate with publics
in dealing with the crisis situation.
Further, Choi and Lin (2009) did not draw conclusions regarding disgust, shame, and sympathy due to the small sample
size of their study. The results of this study provide preliminary answers to their question: Disgust is a type of EAD crisis
emotion; shame is a type of IAD crisis emotion; sympathy is a type of AI crisis emotion. Consequently, our findings add new
and important insights to this previously uncharted territory in effective assessment of emotionally charged publics. First,
when publics seem to be disgusted by what happened, they hold negative feelings that are clearly against the organization
with a clear crisis responsibility attribution in mind. Second, when publics report being ashamed, it signals that they believe
they hold some responsibility for what happened in the crisis. This happens often when the involved publics are internal or
highly identify themselves with the organization. Third, sympathetic feelings are likely to occur with or without a clear crisis
responsibility attribution, and are usually felt toward victims of the crisis, such as organization or other publics affected.
The best-fit model (three-factor oblique), according to our data, indicates two important attributes of crisis emotions.
First, the direction of crisis attribution matters, which is a verification and extension of the SCCT theory. Whether the crisis
attribution is external, internal, or neutral (meaning no attribution or irrelevant to the attribution process) determines
the types of crisis emotions publics are likely to feel in a given organizational crisis. Internal-attribution-dependent crisis
emotions (IAD) such as guilt, embarrassment, and shame, in particular, are identified and differentiated from a more generally
grouped attribution-dependent emotion cluster. Second, the three clusters of crisis emotions (AI, IAD, and EAD) are not
experienced in isolation but are correlated with each other. This finding echoes the finding that attribution independent
emotions “do coexist with attribution dependent emotions” (Weiner, 1986, p. 205) and are “correlational in nature” (Choi
& Lin, 2009, p. 206). This association among different attribution processes and the related emotional responses needs to be
further examined.
The modification indices suggested in the CFA also point to some interesting theoretical possibilities. For example, the
modification indices show a cross-loading of sadness on both AI and EAD crisis emotion clusters, which would imply that the
lines demarcating factor-structures of crisis emotions are not fixed but rather are fluid with the same emotion being triggered
by different evaluations of attribution. This suggestion may indicate that the current SCCT definition of attribution needs to
be expanded from a single variable for crisis responsibility to a multidimensional construct that reflects different conditions
of crisis attribution and leads to differential emotional responses among publics. Further assessment and verification with
new data and statistical analyses are needed to explore this possibility.
The findings from this study paint a complex picture of publics’ emotional responses to crises and highlight the importance
of tracking and segmenting discrete emotions over time. This study helps the discipline to better understand the range of
crisis emotions likely to be felt by publics in a given crisis situation. Crisis emotions are often connected. As this study
suggests, publics may feel different types of crisis emotions, depending on whether they attribute crisis responsibility, and
if so, whether they conduct the attribution process internally or externally.
The scale reported here is a psychometric tool that can be utilized by crisis researchers and managers in capturing the
multiple facets of crisis emotions. This tool can be useful to track and predict publics’ crisis emotions in order to develop
the most effective organizational crisis response messages in accordance with publics’ crisis attribution and needs for their
coping with crisis-induced emotional stresses.
5. Limitations and future directions
As the first study developing a multiple-item scale for measuring publics’ crisis emotions, this study examined the concep-
tualization and operationalization of attribution-independent (AI) crisis emotions versus attribution-dependent (EAD and
IAD) crisis emotions. Findings revealed the cognitive appraisal processes of certain emotions felt by publics in crisis situations,
which are different from emotions felt in non-crisis situations. However, the use of student samples and university-focused
crisis situations may limit the generalizability of the conclusions and their applicability to more general populations and
a broader range of crisis situations. Other emotions, including schadenfreude (drawing pleasure from the pain of others)
(Coombs & Holladay, 2005) might need to be further tested to determine their fit into the existing crisis emotion scale. In
addition, the predictability of the crisis emotion scale is yet to be tested, which will provide further information on whether
the three types of crisis emotions will contribute to effectively predicting publics’ responses to organizational conflict stances
and crisis response strategies.
As Choi and Lin (2009) advocated, “[I]t is important to examine how attribution independent emotions, along with
attribution dependent emotions, can influence outcome variables in SCCT” (p. 199). Future studies on publics’ crisis emotions
in organizational crises should expand the crisis emotion item pool, cross-validate this scale, and further identify other
emotional items and new clusters to fully capture the aspects of crisis emotions based on the crisis attribution process.
With a valid and reliable crisis emotion scale that specifically measures publics’ emotions in organizational crises, scholars
and practitioners can further assess the role of different types of crisis emotions (AI, IAD, and EAD) in different stages of crisis
communication. First, crisis emotions can function as the antecedent or predictor of crisis communication outcomes such
as public support for disaster relief (Jeong, 2010) and other outcome variables such as organizational reputation (Choi & Lin,
2009). Second, crisis emotions can serve as mediators between crisis factors and communication outcomes. For instance,
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Utz et al. (2013) found that the effects of crisis type and reputation, crisis reaction, and communication are mediated by
anger, which is one type of EAD. Third, reducing negative crisis emotions and increasing positive crisis emotions across AI,
IAD, and EAD can be used as important dependent variables in measuring crisis communication effectiveness.
In addition to examining publics’ crisis emotions as affective responses to crisis situations (AI) and as the attribution
of the crisis (IAD and EAD), it will be important for future studies to explore how different crisis emotions, with different
attribution paths, can be incorporated in organizational crisis response decision making and strategy implementation, while
taking crisis information form and source into consideration. As Liu, Austin, and Jin (2011) found, when crisis information
is disseminated by traditional media and when the information source is a third party, publics tend to report the most AI
emotions such as anxiety, apprehension, and fear. The effects of crisis types and crisis information form and source on IAD
and EAD emotions need to be studied further.
How emotions can be utilized in effective organizational response strategies needs to be examined as well. In analyz-
ing nonprofits’ and media’s Facebook and Twitter usage during the 2010 Haiti earthquake relief efforts, Muralidharan,
Rasmussen, Patterson, and Shin (2011) found that nonprofits used more positive emotions to encourage relief efforts,
whereas media used more negative emotions to gain attention and encourage readership. Kim and Niederdeppe (2013) fur-
ther argued that fright/fear and anxiety, types of AI emotions, “should be addressed and managed in facilitating stakeholders’
emotional coping” (p. 44) during a crisis.
In summary, this study is a significant step toward developing a more valid and reliable measurement of publics’ emotions,
evoked by organizational crises, in the sphere of crisis communication. How organizations and media understand, use, and
address AI, IAD, and EAD crisis emotions will provide important insights for crisis managers to gain publics’ support and for
media professionals to better inform publics in crisis situations.
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PUBREL-1289; No. of Pages 10 ARTICLE IN PRESS

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Public Relations Review

Scale development for measuring publics’ emotions in

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 573 529 3165.

2. Conceptualization of crisis emotions

2.1. Situational appraisal and publics’ primary emotions in crises

2.2. Attribution and the grouping of publics’ crisis emotions

3. Method and scale development

3.1. Item reduction and reliability testing

Factor Items Factor loadings

Factor 1 Anxiety .96 .90

Factor 2 Guilt .93 .90

Factor 3 Disgust .90 .84

3.2. Conﬁrmatory factor analysis

4. Discussion and implications

5. Limitations and future directions

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