Exploring the Effects of Instructional Message Strategies on Risk Perceptions and Behavioral Intentions: The Case of a Substandard Vaccine Incident

"Results demonstrated that regulatory communicators' different instructional press releases led to remarkable gaps in participants' risk perceptions of and behavioral intentions toward domestic vaccine."

Gauging the effectiveness of instructional risk and crisis communication has been an imperative challenge for risk communicators. They have studied, for example, the message-centric approach, which involves regulatory authorities focusing during times of crisis more on facilitating informed judgments and decisions for self-protection and less on fostering two-way symmetrical interactions with the public. This study takes place in the context of a 2018 substandard vaccine incident that sparked public outcry in China, challenging both the institutional trust of public stakeholders and the risk management of government regulators. The study identifies two distinct instructional strategies used by regulatory authorities and adopts a goal-attainment approach to measuring the effectiveness of both strategies in instructing nonscientific publics about impending risks.

To produce effective instructional risk messages, organisational communicators have used strategies that either set a buffer (one-way communication featuring scientific explanations about the potential threats or hazards in a logical manner) or form a bridge (exchange of risk information via dialog) between regulatory authorities and nonexperts. While buffering is usually used to defend and restore an organisation's strategic position or reputation, bridging takes a more proactive and balanced approach to communication practices by reaching out to stakeholders in a way that leads to mutual understanding within a relational communication management framework. The bridging approach encompasses the IDEA model, which is grounded in experiential learning theory. IDEA contends that the content of an optimal instructional risk and crisis message should capture four components: internalisation, distribution, explanation, and action. In addition to explanation and distribution (i.e., instructional messages should be distributed through multiple communication channels to reach audiences), internalisation and action involve personalising risk and crisis message design to affected individuals and communities.

As reported here, in July 2018, Changchun Changsheng Life Sciences Ltd., a domestic vaccine manufacturer in China's northeastern Jilin province, was revealed to have provided ineffective vaccines and falsified production and quality control records. China's National Drug Administration  then suspended production at the company and withheld all problematic batches of vaccines involved to ensure they were not placed on the market. No injuries or deaths were reported, but there were risk management challenges nonetheless. Regulatory authorities sought to not only preserve nonscientific publics' right to get access to effective instructional messages but also to reduce individuals' affective risk perception (i.e., calming the public panic) and maintain their behavioural intentions to consume domestic vaccine. Nonetheless, the widespread anxiety expressed during the incident was blamed on the inaccurate and inconsistent instructional risk messages national regulators communicated to public stakeholders.

Shortly after the Changsheng incident, the researchers conducted a quasi-experiment with posttest-only evaluation design. Participants included 454 Chinese people who took an online survey about risk perceptions and risk communication. They were randomly assigned to three different conditions: (i) control group (no message stimulus); (ii) treatment group A: explanation-focused buffering strategy; and (iii) treatment group B: personalisation-focused bridging strategy. Different press releases were designed for each treatment group, with messages based on an official statement issued by the State Administration of Market Regulation in China. The message developed for the explanation treatment condition group contained information focused primarily on the outbreak of the incident. The message stimulus provided for the personalisation group incorporated components addressed in the IDEA model other than explanation and distribution - that is, internalisation and action steps to be taken for self-protection. The internalisation component was designed to maintain audience attention and aid message retention by highlighting proximity and personal relevance.

In examining the differential effects of the press releases on stakeholders' risk perceptions and behavioural intentions, the researchers find that the explanation-focused buffering strategy is significantly more effective in both heightening individuals' cognitive risk perception and reducing their affective risk perception. That is, on average, the explanation message was more effective than the personalisation message in (i) heightening participants' perceived likelihood they will be affected by domestic vaccines (i.e., cognitive risk perception) and (ii) reducing the public panic and negative emotions or reactions to the threat or harm (i.e., affective risk perception). In contrast, the personalisation message demonstrated more effectiveness than the explanation message in sustaining participants' intention (i) to select domestic products for vaccination in the future and (ii) to say positive things about domestic vaccines. Notably, in China, people tend to perceive regulatory authorities as closer to the central government, which earns much more public trust than the local government. In this context in particular, the bridging strategy may further enhance the trustworthiness of regulators, which is conducive to restoring and rebuilding the public image of domestic vaccine market.

In short, the findings highlight the need to tailor instructional message strategies to regulatory organisations' ultimate goals of communication activities. Takeaways for risk communication practitioners include:

• Despite scholars' efforts in advocating a stakeholder-centric pattern to implement and evaluate risk and crisis communication, this study uses a direct message comparison to demonstrate one research-practice gap witnessed in embracing a relational and two-way dialogic framework. That is, whether one deems the bridging approach to be effective depends on the goal, so practitioners must tailor communication strategies to an organisation's ultimate objective.
• The organisation's goals in handling a crisis may vary across different phases of the crisis. Immediately after the outbreak of the crisis, the goal of regulatory authorities is often to guard nonscientific publics against potential threats or harms. Under such circumstances, the explanation-focused strategy is more likely to heighten perceived susceptibility and calm public panic and, therefore, be beneficial to achieving the organisational goal. In a later phase, the personalisation-focused strategy may suit the goal of stabilising the domestic vaccine market and reducing vaccination resistance, primarily through maintaining individuals' intentions to continue using or recommending domestic vaccines. Hence, the contrast between these two message strategies is not absolute.
• This study of the message-centric approach to risk communication has demonstrated the complexity of public stakeholders, which contributes to varying understandings and framing strategies of different cultural groups. As such, risk communicators are not able to control how the public perceive and respond to risk messages but, instead, have to take cultural factors such as normative beliefs and values, perceptions of relational intentions, and worldviews into account. Blindly ignoring multiple stakeholders in the process of risk communication risks sparking anxiety, anger, and fear, which could cause serious consequences far beyond the risk per se.

The researchers conclude that these findings might serve as a starting point for further investigations on how different risk perceptions and behavioural intentions could be targeted individually and how the magnitude and direction of each component changes over the course of a communication crisis.