• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.575-585
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• 2022

Negative perceptions about corporate social responsibility (CSR) crises and repeated crises are increasing. It is necessary to examine the effects of a proactive strategy of disclosing crisis information against the negative perceptions. The research is intended to analyze ability-based trust, and benevolence-based trust by crisis type, crisis history, and timing of crisis disclosure. In this regard, a 2 (crisis history: present vs. absent) x 2 (crisis type: corporate ability crisis vs CSR crisis) x 2 (timing of crisis disclosure: stealing thunder vs thunder) between-groups design experiment was conducted. Research results show crisis type and crisis history have significant interaction effects on ability-based trust. In the CSR crisis, the case with crisis history shows lower ability-based trust than the case without crisis history. Timing of crisis disclosure showed significant interactions with crisis history and crisis type. The stealing thunder strategy heigntened ability-based trust and benevolence-based trust against the CSR crises and the cases without crisis history more than the corporate ability crises and the cases with crisis history. Considering that the stealing thunder strategy is more effective with the CSR crises than the corporate ability crises, the research results suggest that future CSR crisis responses should prepare active disclosure of crisis information before news media disclosure of such information.