Crisis communication and trust: on the long-term individual effects of a disaster on public trust in societal institutions

In times of crisis, effective communication plays a pivotal role. The societal response to a crisis is set in motion through crisis communication channels directed at the public, spearheaded by key institutions like authorities, elected representatives, and the media. The success of this communication relies heavily on maintaining a high level of public trust in these societal institutions. Without such trust, the functioning of society, both on an individual and collective scale, is compromised. Research has shown that, in connection with some crises, there are signs of reduced public trust. This is worrying as, if people do not have confidence in the authorities, elected politicians, or the media who communicate to the public in the event of a major crisis, great difficulties can arise for the authorities and politicians in handling the crisis. In the worst case, mistrust can lead to people not taking instructions and information to heart. Therefore, a broad societal trust is crucial for a functioning crisis management capability. In acknowledging the important link between crisis communication, public trust in societal institutions, and effective crisis management, we take on a unique and unprecedented study, where we lay out evidence of how an extensive natural disaster affects public trust in societal institutions 20 years after the disaster took place. We present the first large-scale, individual-level and long-term study of the impact of natural disasters on public trust in societal institutions. To do this, we rely on two data sources. First, we utilize unique and detailed individual-level administrative data of approximately 16,000 Swedish tourists who survived the 2004 Boxing Day-tsunami, that hit South-East Asia in 2004. We match this data against other individuals in the entire Swedish population registry on several pre-tsunami characteristics, allowing us to better isolate the effect of disaster exposure on measures of public trust in societal institutions – collected via a survey. The survey is administrated to 10,000 individuals in our data (half of which were exposed to the tsunami), allowing for more nuanced long-term measures of public trust in societal institutions and control variables, including exposure severity to the tsunami. In combination, these data allow us to study the long-term effect of natural disaster exposure on public trust in societal institutions in a completely novel and unique way. In summary, the tsunami victims have a generally lower trust in authorities and politicians, and their ability to handle crises almost 20 years after the disaster. They also seem to assess the authorities’ ability to handle other natural disasters negatively, but not their ability to handle other types of crises. In addition, they also have less trust in evening newspapers/tabloids (and their crisis reporting) but not less trust in public service or morning papers. These effects are all significant at the 95%-level and are driven by those who were severely exposed to the tsunami.