Beyond blame: Extending crisis responsibility through multi-stakeholder responsibility, cause attribution, and solution attribution

Crisis communication research has ubiquitously examined crisis responsibility as the extent to which individuals perceive a party to be responsible for the cause of a crisis. Yet, in public crises, responsibility is complex and ambiguous and influenced by stakeholders internal and external to the crisis. This study continues efforts to extend crisis responsibility research by exploring three phenomena, (i) multi-stakeholder responsibility, (ii) solution (in addition to cause) attribution, and (iii) precursors to cause and solution attribution that individuals bring into crisis assessments including relationship quality, issue involvement, and conspiratorial thinking. Survey datasets were collected for two Australian, nationwide public crises that comprised multi-stakeholder and required collaborative behaviors. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that participants evaluated crisis responsibility as cause and solution attribution for the three stakeholders involved. For the Australian Government, dynamics of government-public relationship quality, issue involvement, and conspiratorial thinking related to the government had different effects on cause and solution attribution. • Examined two nationwide crises involving multi-stakeholder responsibility. • Explored cause attribution and solution attribution as two separate dimensions. • Identified precursors to cause attribution and solution attribution.