Restaurant crisis management: The impact of food safety events on firms, media coverage, and role of social media
Abstract
This dissertation includes three essays under the topic of restaurant crisis management in relation to food safety events. Due to the devastation impact of food safety events on firms and consumers, it is vital to understand the impact of the events as well as the mechanism of crisis communication. Three papers examine the financial impact of food safety events on firms, media coverage about food safety events, and the role of social media in communication. The first paper examines the impact of food safety events on financial performance of firms using an event study method. The event study method enables to examine firms' stock prices in response to 40 food safety events over the past 25 years in the U.S. Results demonstrated the magnitude and duration of the impact of food safety events on firm value. The study also revealed that firm-specific factors (firm size, past history) and situational factor (media attention) are significant drivers influencing the magnitude of the impact of food safety events. The second study investigates media coverage about food safety events occurred in the past 25 years in the U.S. using a content analysis. By combining situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and stakeholder theory (ST), the study examined the media reporting patterns focusing on instructing information, response strategies, stakeholders, and media frames as well as the effect of situational factors (crisis responsibility and severity of risk) on these reporting patterns. Based on the analysis of sixty seven news articles, the results reveal the tendency of restaurant firms to be proactive rather than passive. Regulatory agencies were found to be most primary stakeholders during a crisis, followed by victims, customers, suppliers, employees, legal professionals, and shareholders. The salient media frames were found to be vulnerability, history, and emotion. The effect of situational factors was also supported on the media reporting patterns. The third essay deals with the role of social media comments about food safety information on consumer responses. By adopting and extending the dual-process model, the study examined the effect of three components of social media comments: source credibility, the content of comments, and relationship quality. Using a scenario-based survey, the study found significant interaction effects between source credibility and comment content. Although negative comments induced negative responses regardless of source credibility, positive or mixed comments led to less negative responses when the source is highly credible than when the source is less credible. The insignificant effect of relationship quality signified a stronger influence of information itself compared with the influence of the person delivering information. The three papers highlight various aspects of restaurant crisis management in response to food safety events. The use of different methods (event study method, content analysis, and scenario-based survey) extends the magnitude of food safety research which may become an useful guideline for future studies on food safety.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Almanza, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Management|Mass communications
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