Risk and Reward: Regulatory Focus Orientation and the Effectiveness of Promotion and Prevention Targeted Organizational Apologies

Organisations are expected to apologise when they cause offense, but apologies sometimes fail to restore trust. This study applies regulatory focus theory (RFT) to examine why some apologies are more effective than others based on the inclusion of regulatory focus keywords. Our findings are based on a textual analysis of 38 real-world apologies and instrument data from 298 U.S. participants recruited from the CloudResearch Connect platform. Both paired samples t-tests and a mixed-design ANOVA showed that apologies containing promotion or prevention-focused elements restored significantly more trust, p < .001, than those limited to a basic statement of contrition. However, neither test revealed any effect of participants’ chronic RFT orientation on apology effectiveness, nor a significant interaction between apology type and orientation. The findings show that both risk and reward-focused strategies enhance apology effectiveness for U.S. consumers. Our research advances the theory of trust restoration and extends the application of RFT to organisational communication.