Governmental Crisis Response Strategies And Image Restoration In Environmental Crisis

In the current stage,ecological and environmental pollution events,along with mass disturbances,are of frequent occurrence in China.Consequently,the pressure of environmental crisis has become more pronounced.However,recurring environmental crisis events not only affect public health and safety,but also challenge the response capacity of local governments.With little tolerance,the public tends to pay close attention to and have active participation into environmental crisis events,which decreases the response time and increases the communication stress of governments.The difficulty of governments image restoration in environmental crisis makes the choice of appropriate crisis response strategies critically important.Under the framework of situational crisis communication theory,the current study analyzes the response strategies and image recovery effects by local governments in two environmental events happened in 2016 winter,through methods of case study and content analysis.And suggestions on environmental crisis communication strategies for local governments are made.Relevant conclusions and suggestions are as below.First,Linfen government,in the context of accidental and preventable crisis,adopted the communication model centering on rebuilding and bolstering strategy,while Chengdu government resorted to the model based on rebuilding and information providing strategy in the context of accidental and victim crisis.Comparatively,Chengdu government made less crisis communication mistakes and achieved better image rebuilding effect than Linfen government.Second,the rebuilding of governmental image in environmental crisis events is not merely related with response strategies,but also influenced by the the form of crisis response.What's more,the current lack of political trust leads to oppositional reading of official announcement and following fluctuation of governmental image rebuilding effects.The sense of regional environment iniquity was magnified during environment crisis,influencing the public evaluation towards the local government.Third,local governments are suggested to improve the matching rate of crisis response strategies and crisis situation in the future.Meanwhile,communication effects can be enhanced by taking discourse dominance,building participatory communication platform and making alliances with Internet opinion leaders.In the long term,the reconstruction of political trust is fundamental to strengthening government images in environmental crisis.