Public's Responses to an oil spill accident: A test of the attribution theory and situational crisis communication theory

Public’s Attribution vs Punitive Behavior in Indonesian Public Relations Practice

“…The cluster theme considered by Jeong (2009) Indonesian. In addition, the researchers assured that the respondents could withdraw their participation and no penalties given.…”

“…In the public relations fi eld, the theories explain how stakeholders react toward the organization's crisis response in order to protect the reputation during crisis (Coombs & Holladay, 2002;Coombs, 2007b;Coombs, 2010;Jeong, 2009) because SCCT research focuses on public (Coombs, 2010). However, most research focuses on the organization centered approach rather than a public approach (Choi & Lin, 2009) although SCCT has often been overlooked (Kriyantono, 2012).…”

“…The research was inspired by Jeong's (2009) study about how public attribution is affected by public punitive behavior toward Samsung's oil spill in South Korea. Jeong fi nds that public who read good news about Samsung's histories attributed that the accident was not an intentional mistake and they did not claim the company to take responsibility.…”

“…Coombs (2007a, p. 3) called the prior relational reputation "distinctiveness". From the description above, it is obvious that this theory is closely linked to Weiner's Theory of Attribution (Choi & Lin, 2009;Coombs, 2007a;Coombs, 2007b;Jeong, 2009) which states that a person tends to seek the information about the causes of a negative and unexpected event. The public tends to attribute the responsibility for a crisis situation to a particular person because it has an emotional response to the crisis.…”

“…At fi rst, communication crisis research was mostly conducted in management study, such as in Coombs, 2010;Duhe, 2005;Dyer, 1995;Jeong, 2009;Kriyantono, 2012;Kriyantono, 2015;Maggart, 1994;Wigley & Zhang, 2011). But, then followed by the public relations studies (Coombs, 2010).…”