Sharing Behavior of Brand Crisis Information on Social Media : A Case Study of Chinese Weibo

This book adopted 66 brand crisis events as research samples taking place from 2010 to 2016 on social media (Chinese Weibo), performs research on influence mechanism of brand-crisis information-sharing behavior on social media from contextual perspective. The book explores into the fluctuation characteristics of information-sharing behavior, the contextual influence factors, both the static and dynamic mechanism of information-sharing behavior, and regulation measures of crisis information sharing behavior. The important features of the book are reflected in accurate analysis of the autocorrelation, trend characteristics, periodic characteristics and cluster characteristics of the fluctuation of crisis information sharing behavior, and deep exploration of dynamic mechanism and static mechanism of the time lag characteristics, impulsive disturbance, and marginal influence of the impact of information sharing behavior from perspective of situational factors. The book mainly focuses on the field of brand crisis management, and construct the formation and evolution mechanism of brand crisis information sharing behavior from both vertical and horizontal dimensions through a combination of theoretical exposition and case analysis, so that readers can got a clear understanding of brand crisis information communication and management through dimension reduction. The book can be used as a textbook for undergraduates and postgraduates in economics and management in colleges and universities, can also be a reference for business managers, scientific researchers and others interested in the field of crisis management. Foreword 5 Contents 7 About the Author 11 1 Introduction 12 1.1 Research Background 12 1.1.1 Severity of Brand Crisis 12 1.1.2 Rapid Development of Microblog/Weibo 13 1.2 Research Purposes and Significance 14 1.2.1 Research Purposes 14 1.2.2 Research Significance 15 1.3 Research Questions and Structure 16 1.3.1 Research Questions 16 1.3.2 Research Contents 19 1.3.3 Structure 20 1.4 Research Methods and Technical Route 21 1.4.1 Research Methods 21 1.4.2 Technical Route 24 1.5 Research Innovation 24 References 28 2 Literature Review and Theoretical Foundation 29 2.1 Research Status Quo 29 2.1.1 Brand Crisis Dissemination 29 2.1.2 Information Dissemination on Microblogging Platforms 33 2.1.3 Research on Information Behavior 36 2.1.4 Contextual Factors of Behavior 38 2.1.5 Research Review 41 2.2 Theoretical Foundation 42 2.2.1 Information Context Theory 42 2.2.2 Information Grounds Theory 44 2.2.3 Information Processing Theory 46 2.2.4 Field Theory of Psychology 48 2.2.5 Information Behavior Theory 48 2.3 Summary 50 References 51 3 Fluctuation Features of Brand Crisis Information Sharing by Weibo Users 56 3.1 Data Collection and Descriptive Statistics 59 3.1.1 Data Acquisition and Data Preprocessing 59 3.1.2 Data Features and Descriptive Statistical Analysis 65 3.2 Fluctuation Features of Reposting Behavior 70 3.2.1 Fluctuation Features of the Whole Information Spreading Process 71 3.2.2 Weekly Fluctuation Features 84 3.2.3 Weekly Fluctuation Features 90 3.3 Fluctuation Features of Comment Behavior 98 3.3.1 Fluctuation Features of the Whole Communication Process 98 3.3.2 Weekly Fluctuation Features 111 3.3.3 One-Day Fluctuation Features 117 3.4 Summary 125 References 126 4 Contextual Factors Affecting Brand Crisis Information Sharing by Weibo Users 128 4.1 Selection and Construction of Contextual Factors 128 4.2 Testing and Analysis of Classified Contextual Factors 132 4.2.1 Static Contextual Factors 132 4.2.2 Dynamic Contextual Factors 135 4.3 Testing and Analysis of Static Contextual Factors 136 4.3.1 Data Sources 136 4.3.2 Reliability and Validity Analysis 137 4.3.3 Correlation Analysis 139 4.3.4 Causality Test 141 4.4 Testing and Analysis of Dynamic Contextual Factors 142 4.4.1 Time Series Level 142 4.4.2 Data Integrity Level 147 4.5 Summary 157 References 160 5 Static Influencing Mechanism of Weibo Users’ Information Sharing of Brand Crisis Cases 163 5.1 Introduction 164 5.2 Hypothesis 165 5.2.1 Relationship Between Information Context and Physiological Stimulation 165 5.2.2 Relationship Between Physiological Stimulation and Perceptual Attributes 168 5.2.3 Relationship Between Perceptual Attributes and Behavior Intention 170 5.2.4 Moderating Effect of Harm Relevance 170 5.2.5 Theoretical Framework for Research 171 5.3 Research Design and Data Collection 171 5.3.1 Research Methods 171 5.3.2 Design of Scale and Questionnaire 172 5.3.3 Data Collection 173 5.4 Data Processing, Testing and Analyzing 175 5.4.1 Reliability and Validity Analysis 176 5.4.2 Hypothesis Testing 179 5.4.3 Analysis of Results 186 5.5 Cluster Analysis 188 5.5.1 Population Sample 188 5.5.2 Gender Group 189 5.5.3 Age Group 190 5.5.4 Education Group 192 5.5.5 Occupational Group 192 5.6 Conclusion and Discussion 195 5.6.1 Conclusion 195 5.6.2 Discussion 196 5.7 Summary 198 References 198 6 Dynamic Influencing Mechanism of Weibo Users’ Information Sharing of Brand Crisis Cases 204 6.1 Impact of Total Number of Reposts and Comments 206 6.1.1 Causality Test 208 6.1.2 VAR Model Construction 211 6.1.3 Impulse Responses Analysis 215 6.1.4 Marginal Influence 217 6.2 Impact of the Blogger’s Number of Follows and Followers 219 6.2.1 Causality Test 220 6.2.2 VAR Model Construction 223 6.2.3 Impulse Responses Analysis 225 6.2.4 Marginal Influence 228 6.3 Impact of the Number of Follows and Followers of Source Information 230 6.3.1 Causality Test 233 6.3.2 VAR Model Construction 233 6.3.3 Impulse Responses Analysis 236 6.3.4 Marginal Influence 239 6.4 The Impact of Information Temporal Distance 241 6.4.1 Causality Test 243 6.4.2 VAR Model Construction 244 6.4.3 Impulse Responses Analysis 246 6.4.4 Marginal Influence 249 6.5 Decomposition Analysis of Impact Contribution Ratio 251 6.5.1 Reposting Behavior Fluctuation 251 6.5.2 Commenting Behavior Fluctuation 251 6.6 Summary 253 References 255 7 Strategies for Monitoring Brand Crisis Information Sharing by Weibo Users 256 7.1 Positioning Monitoring Time 257 7.1.1 Monitoring Times for Reposting Behavior 258 7.1.2 Monitoring Times for Commenting Behavior 260 7.2 Monitoring of Static Contextual Factors 262 7.2.1 Indicator of Information Visualization (IV) 262 7.2.2 Indicator of Information Sentiment (IS) 263 7.2.3 Indicator of Information Authority (IA) 263 7.2.4 Indicator of Harm Relevance (HR) 263 7.2.5 Indicator of Group Difference 264 7.3 Monitoring of Dynamic Contextual Factors 264 7.3.1 Monitoring of Reposting Behavior 265 7.3.2 Monitoring of Commenting Behavior 268 7.4 Summary 270 8 Conclusion and Suggestions 272 8.1 Research Findings 272 8.1.1 Accurate Analysis of the Fluctuation Characteristics of Brand Crisis Information Sharing by Weibo Users 272 8.1.2 Identifying and Quantitative Analysis of the Contextual Influencing Factors of Information Sharing Behavior on Weibo in Brand Crisis 273 8.1.3 Study on the Influencing Mechanism of Static Contextual Factors of Weibo Users’ Information Sharing of Brand Crisis Cases 274 8.1.4 Study on the Influencing Mechanism of Dynamic Contextual Factors of Brand Crisis Information Sharing by Weibo Users 275 8.1.5 Study of the Strategies for Targeted Monitoring of Brand Crisis Information Sharing by Weibo Users 276 8.2 Research Contributions 276 8.3 Limitations and Suggestions 281 References 282 Appendix A Original Data Retrieval Formats 283 Appendix B Questionnaire 285