RESEARCH Business Government

CRISIS COMMUNICATION
Public's confidence in official sources of information key in health scare

Mark Reutter, Business Editor
(217) 333-0568; mreutter@uiuc.edu

3/1/02

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers have long theorized that people react to health scares such as contaminated food or recalled tires in a straightforward way — they assess their chance of being exposed to the problem and then act to limit their risk.

While logical enough, the theory does not seem to work in cases where a crisis crosses national boundaries. Here broader cultural variables play a role in consumer behavior, a University of Illinois marketing professor argues in a forthcoming paper.

A culture’s "predisposition to risk," Brian Wansink writes in the International Journal of Research and Marketing, has important implications because of the globalization of markets and the spread of news quickly by the mass media. "If different cultures have different attitudes to risk, marketers and multinational corporations need to understand how and why consumers react to a crisis," Wansink said in an interview.

The most widespread food safety panic in recent years was the outbreak of mad cow disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) in 2000-01. The epidemic spread from the British countryside to the Netherlands and Germany, putting intense pressure on farmers, marketers and government agencies.

Wansink worked with Joost M.E. Pennings, a UI professor of consumer economics, and Matthew Meulenberg, a marketing professor at the Wageningen University in the Netherlands, in surveying consumer attitudes about the mad cow crisis. They interviewed 521 people in five cities in Germany and the Netherlands in January and February 2001.

Dramatic differences were found in consumer reactions in the two countries. In Germany, 58 percent said they had reduced their beef consumption because of the scare, compared with only 23 percent of the Dutch. Further, the Germans surveyed said they had cut their beef consumption by nearly 80 percent, while the Dutch had lowered their consumption by about one half.

Interestingly, according to Wansink, individual perceptions of risk in eating contaminated beef were not much different among those surveyed. Nearly 60 percent of the Germans and 58 percent of the Dutch agreed with the statement that they would die if they contracted the human ailment (Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease) associated with BSE.

The biggest difference between the two countries was in the public’s acceptance of information from their governments. The Dutch had a high trust in government information about BSE, while consumer confidence of the German government’s ability to protect public health was low.

As a result, Wansink and his colleagues conclude, "honest and consistent communication by both the government and the beef industry" could be more effective than a mass slaughtering of cows in the case of the Netherlands, while emergency action, including the slaughtering of cattle, appeared to be the only way to regain public trust in Germany.