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Abstract

This study, bases on both the attribution theory and trust repair theory, and explores the effects of attribution and government intervention in the trust repair process, willingness to reconcile and one’s intention to share during the COVID-19 pandemic. Questionnaires are distributed online, and 799 responses are collected, as based on convenience sampling. Partial least squares structural equation modeling is used to conduct analysis. Results show that controllability, stability, affective repair, functional repair, and informational repair have a positive and significant effect on individuals’ willingness to reconcile, but the locus of causality does not have a significant effect. Willingness to reconcile has a positive effect on individuals’ intention to share. Based on these findings, it is recommended that governments develop appropriate strategies to repair peoples’ levels of trust and eliminate the chance of any major crisis event recurrence. Moreover, the findings further confirm that governments and public sector organizations can use the attribution theory and trust repair strategies to affect positive change.

Plain language summary

Rebuilding trust during the COVID-19 pandemic: the impact of explanation and government actions

This research examines how people rebuild trust during the COVID-19 pandemic, using ideas from attribution theory and trust repair theory. We look at the impact of attribution (how people explain events) and government actions on trust repair, willingness to reconcile, and the intention to share. We gathered 799 responses through online questionnaires using convenience sampling. We used a method called partial least squares structural equation modeling for analysis. Our results show that factors like controllability, stability, affective repair, functional repair, and informational repair positively and significantly influence people’s willingness to reconcile. However, the cause of events (locus of causality) doesn’t have a significant effect. Willingness to reconcile, in turn, positively affects the intention to share. Based on these findings, we suggest that governments should develop effective strategies to rebuild trust and prevent future crises. The results also support the idea that governments and public sector organizations can use attribution theory and trust repair strategies to bring about positive changes.

Keywords

attribution theory COVID-19 government intervention trust repair willingness to reconcile

Introduction

Many aspects of people’s lives (i.e., safety, lifestyle, and economy) have been severely impacted and transformed by COVID-19 (Casagrande et al., 2020). Governments worldwide have implemented various restrictive interventions, such as nationwide lockdowns, quarantine efforts, travel alerts and warnings, or public transport restrictions, in order to reduce the spread of the virus (Debata et al., 2020; Haug et al., 2020). Aiming to cope with the pandemic, these interventions may not only influence individuals’ behavior but also induce unintended social and economic costs (Haug et al., 2020).

A government is a group or system of individuals governing an organized community (Wikipedia, 2023) and responsible for ensuring a well-functioning society and also a competitive economy (Slaughter, 2017). During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide have therefore implemented differing interventions to ensure their roles have been adequately fulfilled. However, too little or too much, government intervention may cause the public to distrust their governments (Rieger & Wang, 2022). This situation may be exacerbated if governments are not sufficiently equipped to respond to this pandemic. For example, the government of Taiwan is no exception in taking differing forms of intervention such as quarantines, vaccines, consumption vouchering, in order to maintain or affect societal recovery and economic stability during the pandemic. A recent report (The Economist, 2021), however, shows that Taiwan, once ranked 49^th among 50 economies worldwide in terms of its ability to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and to return to normal life, may lower or even destroy individuals’ trust in their government.

Extant studies pointed that trust in other individuals or trust in an institution is a key factor in social and economic progress taking place (Algan et al., 2017; Jacobsen, 1999). The study by Mazumder (2020) demonstrated that social trust is important for explaining an organization’s performance, especially during a crisis. Another study found a clear general decline over the years in levels of trust in European governments (Pérez-Morote et al., 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic, negative perceptions such as a distrust of society and even of the government may be evoked (Wadhams, 2020). Hence, trust in government will continue to be challenged and will need to be repaired; therefore, how to effectively repair the public’s broken trust, as caused by the pandemic, should never be neglected by any government.

Until now, a number of studies have analyzed the processes and strategies associated with trust-repair (see Table 1). These studies have greatly advanced our knowledge regarding this topic. Three evident gaps can however be identified from the included studies located in Table 1. First, it is clear that the focus of existing research regarding trust-repair, however, has been chiefly concentrated on business contexts (Bachmann et al., 2015; Bozic, 2017), while few have considered the role of government intervention in crises, such as what is needed with COVID-19. Second, although some studies point out that government intervention is important for building trust (Brodt & Neville, 2013) and for repairing trust (Tomlinson & Mayer, 2009), there is still a lack of theoretical background and overall understanding as to how a government may intervene in the trust-repair process (Woolthuis et al., 2014). Third, a review by Bozic (2017) identifies that more research on the determinants of trust-repair is in fact required, this appearing pre-pandemic. Considering this research direction, antecedents to trust-repair that focus on internal attributions by individuals are less examined.

Table 1.

Literature Relating to Trust and Trust-Repair.

Source	Focus	Theory	Methodology	Construct	Finding
Xie and Peng (2009)	Trust repair strategy	Trust repair	Scenario-based experiment	Corporate informational, affective, and functional initiatives	•Focus on negative publicity. •Take informational, affective, and functional initiatives as three trustworthiness factors. •Re-establishing trust is a key point and different strategies have different effects.
S.-H. Yu et al. (2017)	Trust repair in e-commerce	Trust repair	Empirical research	Trust transfer, trust repair	•Trust transfer among diverse business channels •Trust repair strategies have positive effects on positive emotion. •Positive emotion has a mediating effect.
Y. Yu et al. (2017)	Trust repair under third-party policy	Trust repair and third party	Empirical research	Customer trust, trust, trust repair.	•Third-party strategies are useful to repair trust. •The characteristics of relational closeness between third party and power of third party have positive relationships with trust repair.
Bozic (2017)	Trust repair in the food retailer industry	Trust build and repair	Literature review	Customer trust, trust, trust repair	•Proposed four factors and three conditions affect trust recovery. •The impact of trust is likely to be different.
Cui et al. (2018)	Trust repair in e-commerce	Trust build and repair	Experimental design	Trust repair, apologize, compensate.	•Different strategies have different effects in repairing trust. •Apology with internal attribution is more effective in repairing trust.
Harrison-Walker (2019)	Service recovery	Stress theory and trust repair	Empirical research	Recovery strategies, customer forgiveness and recovery outcomes	•Different strategies have different effects in repairing trust in different industry types. •Forgiveness is a mediating variable.
Wei et al. (2020)	Service recovery	Social exchange theory	Experimental design	Different service recovery strategies and emotional recovery	•High-power consumers exhibit forgiveness through mediation effects of perceived fairness and empathy. •Low-power consumers show forgiveness through empathy alone
Mazumder (2020)	Society trust during the COVID-19	Abnormal returns theory	Event study	Stock price data from the COMPUSTAT	•Firms benefit less in the high trust states because these firms can access to other external financings cheaply. •In low trust states, average three-day announcement abnormal returns are higher.
Pérez-Morote et al. (2020)	E-government trust and performance evaluation	Trust in government	Cross-sectional and longitudinal study	Use of e-government, trust in government, education, rurality, age and income	•Use of e-government services is influenced by supply-side e-government evaluations. •Trust in governments and the digital divide associated to income and education.
Kähkönen et al. (2021)	Employee trust repair	Organizational team trust and trust repair	Literature review	Long term approach, trust repair	•Trust repair at the team level should take place in an organizational context. •Using trust repair strategies early to address small breaches before they escalate into larger breaches increases the efficiency and effectiveness of trust repair with employees.
Zhang et al. (2021)	Trust repair in mobile commerce	Trust repair	Empirical research	Trust, relational psychological contract, transactional psychological contract, arousal and regulation	•Trust cannot be repaired by a single psychological strategy. •Relational strategy has the strongest effect. •Trust can be repaired by arousal and regulation strategies.

The above identified gaps in the literature trigger the motivation for this research. We attempt to bridge these gaps by examining trust-repair process via a combination of attribution theory (i.e., an internal view) and government intervention (i.e., an external view) throughout the COVID-19 pandemic period. The primary purpose of this research includes: (1) The effect of an individual’s attribution of the COVID-19 crisis and a government’s specific form of intervention to fix the COVID-19 crisis on his/her willingness to reconcile; (2) The effect of an individual’s willingness to reconcile on his/her intention to share reconciliation-related information; and, (3) Whether willingness to reconcile mediates the relationship between the attribution, government intervention and the individual’s intention to share. We believe that this study applies such a unique approach within a unique context which may provide important implications for both theory and practice. Theoretically speaking, by combining internal and external views of individuals offers, a more comprehensive perspective used to tackle the trust-repair issue, especially during the pandemic, may emerge. Pragmatically speaking, by achieving a better understanding of the trust-repair process, a government may propose better resulting strategies to restore the public’s trust, should any negative crises transpire.

Conceptual Development

With an understanding of the importance of repairing popular trust by a government during a crisis, we argue to examine this trust-repair process from two perspectives simultaneously: internal and external views of the general public. An internal view aims to understand how the general public internally attribute the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas an external view intends to know how the general public externally assess the government’s responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. By integrating these two views, we believe the attributable reason for why the general public are willing to repair broken trust can be better understood from a more holistic perspective.

First, the internal view adopts the attribution theory (Weiner, 2010, 2018) because this theory maintains that individuals normally seek the root-cause whenever they experience a negative event. Consequently, they then combine all relevant information to form their opinions towards that negative event. Most importantly, individuals determine their corresponding behavior based on their personal opinions. Fitting attribution theory into this present study, the public see the cause of COVID-19 pandemic based on three dimensions (Weiner, 2010, 2018): locus of causality, controllability, and stability. In other words, the COVID-19 pandemic is externally generated (locus of causality) and represents a natural disaster that cannot be anticipated (controllability), and which may re-occur in the future (stability). The public then evaluate this COVID-19 crisis based on their attribution and decide their subsequent behavior including repairing trust.

Second, the external view adopts the government’s intervention because it is the responsibility of a government to diminish the negative impact of COVID-19 on the attached society and its economy. As stated above, the public’s trust in their government’s intervention schemes is declining (Pérez-Morote et al., 2020) and even further deteriorated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (Wadhams, 2020). Hence, a government must seek to implement differing interventions to repair the public’s trust in them during the course of the pandemic. This research therefore adopts trust-repair strategies (Xie & Peng, 2009) and consider these strategies embodied by governmental interventions to restore the public’s trust in them. Three trust repair strategies including affective repair, functional repair, and informational repair (Xie & Peng, 2009) are suitable for the study context since the Taiwanese government adopted similar strategies in response to the pandemic. For example, mourning and apologizing for the deceased due to COVID-19 (i.e., affective repair), compensating loss of income due to quarantines (i.e., functional repair), and reporting the immediate epidemic statistics (i.e., informational repair). As such, individuals then held the opportunity to decide their subjective responses to the above government interventions, including repairing trust.

Individuals possess the prerogative to move to the trust-repairing process after assessing attribution and considering the effectiveness of government intervention. This trust-repair process requires both parties to reconcile, which is defined as the degree to which individuals are willing to respond and maintain their relationship with the government after a crisis passes (Tomlinson et al., 2004; Y. Yu et al., 2017). If individuals can accept how the government handles COVID-19 crisis events, they would then share in some fashion, defined as the degree to which people are willing to share their appreciation of governmental approaches with others on social networking sites.

According to the above discussion and inferences, this research proposes the research framework, as shown in Figure 1, where attribution and government intervention affect individuals’ willingness to reconcile; and, their willingness to reconcile, in its turn, affects individuals’ intention to share. The justification of the proposed hypotheses are derived as follows. In order to avoid some unexpected effects due to confounding variables affecting the results, three control variables are included in the research model: age, gender and education.

Figure 1.

Research model.

Trust and Trust Repair

Blau (2017) pointed out that trust is based on positive expectations of the intentions or behaviors of others. It is about one’s willingness to believe in the positive psychological state of another party in an uncertain situation. To varying degrees, trust is broken when there is a significant difference between expectations and reality (Y. Yu et al., 2017). Trust must be repaired to maintain the relationship existing between two parties. Bozic (2017) defined trust-repair as the process of actively repairing trust after such trust has been damaged. Generally speaking, losing trust of customers may be equal to losing customers for private companies, which is the last thing most companies want to see happen. In this same vein, a seeming lack of trust can destroy the trust relationship between the public and the government as a whole.

Attribution and Trust Repair

In Weiner’s (2010) study of attribution theory, the primary attribution dimensions include locus of causality, controllability, and stability. Locus of causality is meant to include an event that could be either internally caused or externally caused, controllability denotes the degree to which individuals believe that the cause of a negative crisis event is preventable and therefore avoidable, and stability refers to whether the event which causes the potential threat occurs often, occasionally, or frequently (Weiner, 2018). Locus of causality and controllability directly affect the attribution of responsibility for a behavior to occur, while stability is closely related to expectations of future behavior. The attribution of responsibility and future expectations will ultimately affect people’s behavior, including trust-repair (Lewicki & Bunker, 1996).

Locus of Causality

This study defines locus of causality as the degree to which a negative crisis event occurs due to the actions of individuals themselves or to external factors (such as those being caused by the government). Attribution theory (Tomlinson & Mayer, 2009; Weiner, 2018) states that locus of causality may affect individuals’ trust and lead to negative affective responses, which may affect subsequent behaviors. Hence, regardless of whether people attribute a negative crisis event to themselves or to external factors, there remains the possibility that they are willing and able to reconcile with the government to solve the critical problem caused by the crisis. Previous research (Ha et al., 2020) confirmed that locus of causality positively impacts the public’s recognition of the capabilities of explainable artificial intelligence systems. Based on the aforementioned literature and discussion, it is hypothesized that:

H_1-a: Effect of locus of causality positively influences willingness to reconcile

Controllability

This research defines controllability as the degree to which individuals believe that the cause of a negative crisis event is both preventable and avoidable by one’s government authority. If the public believes that the government did not intentionally allow the crisis to occur or that it happens occasionally and cannot be controlled, they may easily forget the situation (Chen et al., 2013). On the contrary, if the public believes that the government should pay more attention and invest more resources to deal with the crisis it will be memorable. Hence, if the public has higher expectations for the government’s foreseeable actions, they may be more willing to reconcile with the government. Previous evidence found that controllability significantly predicts customers’ subsequent perception of an organization’s service recovery (Hess et al., 2003) or predicts an individual’s level of satisfaction (Tsang et al., 2016). We therefore hypothesize that:

H_1-b: Effect of controllability positively influences willingness to reconcile

Stability

This research defines stability as the extent to which the public believes that the cause of the negative crisis event is either temporary or continuous in duration. If the crisis event occurs temporarily, the public will attribute it to instability, which cannot either be avoided or prevented. On the contrary, if the public believes that the crisis event is avoidable, they will have higher expectations of the government and also have a higher willingness to reconcile with the government. Prior evidence identified that stability positively impacts the public’s recognition of the capabilities of explainable artificial intelligence systems (Ha et al., 2020) or affects people’s re-purchase intention (Fu et al., 2021). It is thus hypothesized that:

H_1-c: Effect of stability positively influences willingness to reconcile

Government Intervention and Trust Repair

Without the trust of its people, the government will face tremendous difficulties when effectively governing a country. A government has more resources than a private company possesses, so it can therefore leverage its professionalism and literal resources to implement the appropriate crisis response, thereby improving the unbalanced relationship of trust between the public and itself (Alessandro et al., 2021; Grimmelikhuijsen, 2012). This study uses three widely adopted trust repair strategies: (1) affective repair, (2) functional repair, and (3) informational repair (Xie & Peng, 2009).

Affective Repair

This research defines affective repair as the degree to which the government apologizes, explains, and empathizes with the people, and expresses regret and responsibility for what has transpired. Through affective repair strategies, companies signal responsibility and care towards consumers (Casidy & Shin, 2015), which positively contributes to the trust-repair process (Lewicki & Bunker, 1996). Previous research has reported that affective repair is positively related to perceived fairness (Wei et al., 2020), positive emotions (Chen et al., 2013; S.-H. Yu et al., 2017), and trust repair (Bansal & Zahedi, 2015). We therefore hypothesize that:

H_2-a: Effect of affective repair positively influences willingness to reconcile

Functional Repair

This research defines functional repair as being a form of economic compensation, such as money, goods, and discounts, and putting in managerial mechanisms to avoid the re-occurrence of crisis events. Prior evidence clearly shows that functional repair improves or repairs consumers’ trust (Cui et al., 2018; De Cremer, 2010). Based on the aforementioned literature, this research reasonably deduced that if a government provided economic compensation after a crisis negatively affects the rights and interests of the people, and then it takes measures to ensure that a similar crisis will not happen again, people should be willing to reconcile with the government. Thus, it is hypothesized that:

H_2-b: Effect of functional repair positively influences willingness to reconcile

Informational Repair

This research defines informational repair as the description, explanation, or latest information that provides transparency with how a negative event is to be handled. Prior evidence demonstrates that sharing consumer crisis information by organizations not only meets consumers’ expectations but also plays an important role in the process of trust repair (Chen et al., 2013; Guo et al., 2015; Nakayachi & Watabe, 2005), We argue that this strategy also holds for a government since governmental provision of relevant information helps people recognize the government’s transparency (Alessandro et al., 2021). Prior research has also confirmed that informational repair positively affects perceived fairness (Wei et al., 2020) and positive emotions (Chen et al., 2013; S.-H. Yu et al., 2017). Based on the aforementioned literature and discussion, it is hypothesized that:

H_2-c: Effect of informational repair positively influences willingness to reconcile

Reconciliation and Intention to Share

Reconciliation is an expression of forgiveness by the victim to mend the relationship between both parties (Aquino et al., 2006). Reconciliation can only be established if both parties are willing to put in the effort to rebuild their relationship (Lewicki & Bunker, 1996). Therefore, reconciliation is implicit in the trust-repair process (Y. Yu et al., 2017). The act of rebuilding after trust has been broken is a kind of positive expectation based on the intentions or behaviors of others. When the government proposes compensatory measures, effective reconciliation can lead to the restoration of trust (Carmeli & Gittell, 2009). Although previous research has not demonstrated the association between willingness to reconcile and the sharing of information, there are several studies (Bilgihan et al., 2016; Mirkovski et al., 2019; Styvén et al., 2020) that have found individuals’ positive perceptions to have a positive effect on information sharing. Thus, this research reasonably hypothesizes that:

H₃: Effect of willingness to reconcile positively influences intention to share

The Mediating Role of Willingness to Reconcile

Reconciliation plays an important role in rebuilding trust (Tomlinson et al., 2004). Aside from building or restoring positive and harmonious intergroup relations, reconciliation can also eliminate negative emotions, further increase goodwill towards others, meet the varied needs of people and government during a crisis, promote willingness to reconcile (Goldenberg et al., 2016), and restore the relationship of trust between people and a government (Shnabel & Nadler, 2008). In their study of artificial intelligence applications and user satisfaction, Uzir et al. (2021) reported that trust influences user satisfaction and partial mediates between user satisfaction and its antecedents. In a similar vein, reconciliation should play a mediating role between intention to share and its antecedents. Therefore, it is hypothesized that:

H_4-a: Willingness to reconcile mediates the relationship between locus of causality and intention to share

H_4-b: Willingness to reconcile mediates the relationship between controllability and intention to share

H_4-c: Willingness to reconcile mediates the relationship between stability and intention to share

H_4-d: Willingness to reconcile mediates the relationship between affective repair and intention to share

H_4-e: Willingness to reconcile mediates the relationship between functional repair and intention to share

H_4-f: Willingness to reconcile mediates the relationship between informational repair and intention to share

Research Method

Measures

The items in the questionnaire for this research reference relevant literature and were modified to adapt to the research context in an effort to ensure cultural equivalence. The first draft of the questionnaire is reviewed by three experts (PhD’s in Management) and revised based on the relevant suggestions. Since the participants used Mandarin Chinese but referenced items are in English, we adopted a back-translation approach (Brislin, 1976) to ensure the translation equivalence took place. Items about affective repair, functional repair, and informational repair are based on Xie and Peng (2009); and, they are measured using three items each. Items about the locus of causality, controllability, and stability are based on Matikiti et al. (2019). The locus of causality and controllability are measured using two items each, while stability is measured using three items. Items related to willingness to reconcile were based on Aquino et al. (2006) and Tomlinson et al. (2004); so, it is measured using three items. Finally, intention to share are based on Bilgihan et al. (2016) and Hosany et al. (2016); so, it is also measured using three items. All questions are measured according to a 5-point Likert scale (“1 = strong disagreement” and “5 = strong agreement”). Before the questionnaires were officially distributed, a pre-test was conducted with 20 qualified samples. The questionnaire was then slightly revised based on the results of the pre-test. The final version of the questionnaire is as shown in Appendix A.

Data Collection and Sample

This research aims to investigate whether individuals’ attribution of a crisis and the government’s intervention in said crisis affects those individuals’ willingness to reconcile and whether they would share reconciliation-related information. Due to the popularity of social networks and the rapid dissemination of information on social networks, this research adopts an online survey designed using Google Forms^®. We distributed the online questionnaire, based on convenience sampling, to the users of Facebook^®, which is the most widely used social network platform in Taiwan (Kemp, 2020). To approach possible respondents, we contacted and requested the moderators of communities on Facebook^® who are willing to help distribute questionnaires directly to their members. Questionnaires were distributed and then collected for 1 month, spanning February 16, 2021 to March 15, 2021. Participants were all located in Taiwan and therefore have been affected in some measure by the government’s interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic. All participants were therefore deemed qualified to respond to our survey.

Data Analysis

Descriptive statistics are used to profile the respondents, while partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM) is used for testing hypotheses. PLS is used because this approach does not require rigid statistical assumptions and thus is appropriate for analyzing complex models (Hair et al., 2017), as in the case of this study. Bootstrapping with 5,000 sub-samples is used to estimate t-statistics for PLS analysis. Mediation analysis is undertaken based on the approaches suggested by prior evidence (Baron & Kenny, 1986; Hair et al., 2017). Furthermore, our respondents are all Taiwanese individuals sharing similar demographical perceptions, nesting effect such as nationality is therefore not considered in this study.

Results

Descriptive Statistics

A total of 799 respondents completed the questionnaire. Table 2 summarizes the respondent characteristics. The results indicate that most respondents are female (68.21%), between 21 and 30 years of age (66.08%), have a university-level education (46.80%), and spend between 4 and 6 hr a day on social media (39.17%). Furthermore, respondents usually consume content related to current affairs (30.54%), followed by those related to cuisine (26.28%).

Table 2.

Respondent Characteristics.

Characteristics	Attributes	Frequency	Percentage
Gender	Male	254	31.79
Gender	Female	545	68.21
Age	≤ 20	153	19.15
	21–30	528	66.08
	31–40	68	8.51
	≥ 41	50	6.26
Education	Senior high school ≤	131	16.40
	University	374	46.80
	Graduate school	294	36.80
Daily time using social media (hour)	<1	30	3.75
	1–3	306	38.30
	4–6	313	39.17
	7–9	109	13.64
	≥10	41	5.13
Content browsed	Traveling	111	13.89
	Cuisine	210	26.28
	Fashion	102	12.77
	Beauty	36	4.51
	Health	22	2.75
	Video games	74	9.26
	Current affairs	244	30.54

Measurement Model

Before analyzing the data, we checked for common method bias (CMB) by means of Harman’s single-factor (Harman, 1976) and variance inflation factors (VIFs) (Kock & Lynn, 2012). Harman’s single factor indicates that the first factor accounts for only 27.56%, which is less than 50% of the total variance (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). Moreover, all the VIFs of constructs are less than 3.3 (Kock & Lynn, 2012), indicating CMB is not a threat in our data.

PLS comprises two stages of assessment: the measurement model and the structural model (Hair et al., 2017). The measurement model tests the reliability and validity of the questionnaire items and constructs (Hair et al., 2017). The results of the reliability and validity analysis of this study are shown in Table 3. The minimum loading of the items is 0.69 (stability), which is approximate to the suggested value of 0.7 (Hair et al., 2017), and the composite reliability of all constructs exceeds the recommended value of 0.7 (Hair et al., 2017). These demonstrate that both the items and constructs are reliable. In terms of validity, the lowest average variance extracted is 0.56 (stability), which is higher than the recommended convergent validity value of 0.5 (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). As for discriminant validity, this research used the heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations evaluation method. The results show that all constructs exhibit a heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations below the suggested threshold of .85 (Henseler et al., 2015), indicating sufficient discriminant validity.

Table 3.

Reliability and Validity.

Constructs	Loadings	M	SD	CR	AVE	Heterotrait-monotrait ratio of correlations
Constructs	Loadings	M	SD	CR	AVE	LO	CO	ST	AR	FR	IR	WR	SH
LO	0.83–0.97	3.18	0.91	0.90	0.82
CO	0.85–0.91	3.85	0.72	0.87	0.78	.52
ST	0.69–0.86	3.58	0.61	0.79	0.56	.15	.24
AR	0.83–0.91	3.15	0.80	0.91	0.78	.04	.09	.12
FR	0.82–0.90	3.36	0.80	0.91	0.76	.02	.11	.18	.74
IR	0.86–0.90	3.64	0.73	0.92	0.79	.05	.15	.19	.70	.74
WR	0.83–0.89	3.76	0.67	0.90	0.75	.05	.28	.25	.57	.61	.69
SH	0.90–0.91	3.70	0.73	0.93	0.81	.07	.24	.16	.27	.25	.25	.39

Note. M = mean; SD = standard deviation; CR = composite reliability; AVE = average variance extracted; LO = locus of causality; CO = controllability; ST = stability; AR = affective repair; FR = functional repair; IR = informational repair; WR = willingness to reconcile; SH = intention to share.

Structural Model

Among the hypotheses based on attribution theory, locus of causality does not have a significant effect on willingness to reconcile (p > .05) which does not support H_1-a and; controllability (p < .001) and stability (p < .01) both have a significant effect on willingness to reconcile, supporting H_1-b and H_1-c. With regards to constructs pertaining to governmental intervention, affective repair (p < .001), functional repair (p < .001), and informational repair (p < .001) all of these have a significantly positive effect on willingness to reconcile, thus supporting H_2-a, H_2-b, and H_2-c. Furthermore, willingness to reconcile is a significant predictor of intention to share (p < .001), thus supporting supports H₃. The results of the structural model analysis are shown in Figure 2. Constructs from attribution theory and government intervention collectively account for approximately 42% of the variation in willingness to reconcile, which is close to having moderate explanatory power (Hair et al., 2017). The overall model explains around 13% of the variation in intention to share, meaning that it has low explanatory power (Hair et al., 2017). Further, the hypothesis-testing results remain the same even after controlling for potential confounding variables inclusive of age, gender, and education.

Figure 2.

Structural model results.

Mediating Effect of Willingness to Reconcile

This study tests the mediating effect of willingness to reconcile in accordance with the prior literature (Baron & Kenny, 1986; Hair et al., 2017; Kenny, 2021). As shown in Table 3, among the attribution constructs, although willingness to reconcile significantly affects intention to share (see Figure 2), locus of causality does not significantly affect intention to share indirectly (see Table 4). Thus, willingness to reconcile does not mediate the link between locus of causality and intention to share; as such, H_4-a is not supported. However, willingness to reconcile has a partial mediating effect upon the association between controllability and one’s intention to share and a complete mediating effect upon the relationship between stability and intention to share; for this reason, hypotheses H_4-b and H_4-c are thus supported. As for the constructs of government intervention, willingness to reconcile has a complete mediating effect upon the relationship between affective repair and intention to share, a complete mediating effect upon the relationship between functional repair and intention to share, and a complete mediating effect upon the relationship between informational repair and intention to share; thus, hypotheses H_4-d, H_4-e, and H_4-f are supported.

Table 4.

Mediation Analysis.

Path	Direct effect	95% CI		Indirect effect	95% CI
Path	Direct effect	Lower	Upper	Indirect effect	Lower	Upper	Type of mediation
LO → SH	−0.01	−0.09	0.09	0.00	−0.03	0.02	No
CO → SH	−0.12	−0.05	0.20	0.05	−0.02	0.08	Partial
ST → SH	−0.06	−0.01	0.13	0.02	−0.01	0.05	Complete
AR → SH	−0.10	−0.01	0.20	0.05	−0.02	0.08	Complete
FR → SH	−0.03	−0.07	0.13	0.06	−0.03	0.10	Complete
IR → SH	−0.02	−0.13	0.09	0.12	−0.08	0.15	Complete

Note. CI = confidence interval; LO = locus of causality; CO = controllability; ST = stability; AR = affective repair; FR = functional repair; IR = informational repair; SH = intention to share.

Discussion

This study investigates: (1) The effect of public attribution of crisis and government intervention to fix the crisis on the public’s willingness to reconcile; (2) The effect of the public’s willingness to reconcile on their intention to share reconciliation-related information; and (3) Whether willingness to reconcile mediates the relationship between the public’s attribution/government intervention and their intention to share. The main findings of this study are that constructs from attribution theory, except for locus of causality and government intervention, can predict one’s willingness to reconcile with a governmental entity. Willingness to reconcile, in its turns, predicts the public’s intention to share personal information. Further, willingness to reconcile mediates the associations between controllability/stability/affective repair/functional repair/informational repair and intention to share.

These findings align with attribution theory (Weiner, 2010, 2018) and support evidence of trust repair strategies (Xie & Peng, 2009). In relation to hypotheses based on attribution theory, our findings indicate that the locus of causality does not significantly influence people’s willingness to reconcile. This finding contrasts with prior research findings (Ha et al., 2020) grounded in attribution theory. We believe that this may be because this study discusses a society-wide public health crisis event, which is more complex than those encountered by typical companies, even in the most extraordinary settings. Furthermore, the government couldn’t promptly clarify the causal source of the event. These factors may affect people’s assessment of the COVID-19 crisis event and thereby cause locus of causality to not affect willingness to reconcile.

Additionally, we validated a positive and significant association between controllability and the willingness to reconcile. This finding supports previous research that explored the connection between controllability and customers’ perception of an organization’s service recovery (Hess et al., 2003) or an individual’s satisfaction (Tsang et al., 2016). When individuals perceive a negative crisis event as being preventable and within the control of their government authority, they are more inclined to reconcile with the government during crises, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We established a positive correlation between stability and the willingness to reconcile. This finding aligns with prior research exploring the association between stability and the public’s recognition of the capabilities of explainable artificial intelligence systems (Ha et al., 2020) or its impact on people’s repurchase intention (Fu et al., 2021). In the context of a temporary crisis event, the public is likely to attribute it to instability, which is either avoidable or preventable. Consequently, the public tends to reconcile with their government during crises such as with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Regarding the hypotheses centered on trust repair, we observed a positive and significant association between affective repair and the willingness to reconcile. This result aligns with prior research that explores the connection between affective repair and individuals’ positive perceptions or emotions (Chen et al., 2013; Wei et al., 2020; S.-H. Yu et al., 2017). In the event that the government issues an apology, provides explanations, expresses empathy towards the people, or takes responsibility for the entire situation, the public is more likely to reconcile with the government during a crisis.

Secondly, we showed that functional repair predicts a positive inclination to reconcile. This discovery aligns with prior research indicating that functional repair enhances or restores consumers’ trust (Cui et al., 2018; De Cremer, 2010). If a government offers economic compensation in the aftermath of a crisis that adversely impacts the rights and interests of the people, and subsequently implements measures to prevent a recurrence of such a crisis, individuals are more likely to be inclined to reconcile with the government.

Thirdly, we identified a significant and positive relationship between informational repair and the willingness to reconcile. This result is consistent with previous evidence indicating that informational repair improves individuals’ perceived fairness (Chen et al., 2013; Wei et al., 2020; S.-H. Yu et al., 2017). When a government provides relevant information about a crisis, individuals acknowledge the government’s attempt at transparency, fostering their willingness to reconcile.

The confirmed positive and significant relationship between the willingness to reconcile and the intention to share highlights the mutual effort needed for reconciliation and relationship rebuilding to take place. When the public is willing to reconcile with the government, it indicates a restoration of trust, leading to the online sharing of information. This, in turn, fosters a broader understanding of how the government manages crises, such as in the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, the public’s trust in the government is likely to increase. In essence, trust repair not only improves an individual’s satisfaction with the relationship and sense of belonging to the community, but it also enhances sharing. This connection reflects that trust repair is a process of cooperation, positively influencing an individual’s sharing behavior.

Regarding the mediating roles played by willingness to reconcile, we confirmed willingness to reconcile mediates five out of six relationships. We cannot confirm that the willingness to reconcile mediates the relationship between locus of causality and one’s intention to share. Prior evidence emphasizes that reconciliation plays an important role in rebuilding trust (Tomlinson et al., 2004). The public’s trust in the government can never be reestablished without individuals’ willingness to reconcile.

This study delves deeper into the interference effect of government intervention. While the government can contribute by guiding, mediating, or providing resources to the public in a trust repair process, the impact of such intervention may differ across contexts. Government involvement has the potential to enhance the influence of social support on trust repair by offering additional resources or reinforcing norms. However, it may also result in unintended consequences, such as over-intervention or uneven distribution of resources.

Theoretical Implications

Several important theoretical contributions related to repairing trust have been made by this study. First of all, the current study has investigated factors influencing individuals’ willingness to reconcile and its effect on individuals’ intention to share reconciliation information during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study advances research on important factors motivating individuals to reconcile with the government based on attribution theory (i.e., locus of causality, controllability, and stability) and government intervention (i.e., affective repair, functional repair, and informational repair). Despite there being evidence (Hassan et al., 2021, 2023) examining overall trust in governments during the COVID-19 pandemic, a paucity of studies have sought to investigate public trust-repair with the government during the recent pandemic. Our study findings support most of the relationships in a previously unstudied topic under a less studied context.

Secondly, this study has further added to the existing knowledge base since we confirm that willingness to reconcile plays a mediating role between the relationships of most antecedents of willingness to reconcile and intention to share, in the trust repairing process. Hence, this study has addressed that attribution and government intervention alone are insufficient to motivate individuals’ to share reconciliation information. It is the trust-repair process that enables individuals to share reconciliation information during the pandemic.

Practical Implications

This study has additionally made several informative practical implications, which could be referenced by the government when, not if, the next public health crisis occurs. First, controllability and stability are the primary factors that can influence individuals’ willingness to reconcile with the government during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to attribution theory, when people face crisis events and blame the government, they believe that the problem frequently occurs and cannot be solved temporarily. Suppose the government can use their experience to improve their prediction and control of similar problems in advance to reduce errors and further improve relevant actions; in that case, they can eliminate individuals’ unreasonable psychological state and improve the willingness to reconcile. These findings reflect those of previous research (Ha et al., 2020; Matikiti et al., 2019).

Second, this study found that the governmental intervention of repair strategies (i.e., affective repair, functional repair, and informational repair) have a positive effect on people’s willingness to reconcile. The failure of the government to meet people’s expectations will generally damage people’s trust. If the government can offer an apology and take responsibility promptly, provide economic/material compensation, improve internal management processes, and provide the latest information promptly, the public will have a far more positive perception of the government’s sincerity and responsible attitude in given situations. These research findings are in accordance with previous evidence (Harrison-Walker, 2019; Wei et al., 2020; Xie & Peng, 2009).

Third, this study also confirms that willingness to reconcile exerts a positive effect on individuals’ intentions to share. When people have a higher willingness to reconcile, they will trust the government to a greater extent, prompting people to follow the government’s preventive policies and share reconciliation-related information throughout their social networking strata. This result is consistent with the previous research finding stating that when people hold a positive cognition, they are more willing to share information (Bilgihan et al., 2016; Mirkovski et al., 2019; Stern & Kumar, 2014; Styvén et al., 2020; Wall & Dunne, 2012).

Fourth, willingness to reconcile mediates between the relationships of controllability/stability and intention to share. Therefore, we infer that controllability and stability can promote people’s intention to share through their willingness to reconcile. In a crisis where people’s trust has been damaged, a government may increase people’s willingness to reconcile if the government can improve its systems and measures, reduce the event’s potential impact, focus on repairs and compensation efforts, and propose compensation that is of interest to stakeholders involved.

Limitations and Future Research

This research is limited by its focus to Facebook® users who may not necessarily represent the shared views of all citizens in Taiwan, nor can it reflect on other crisis events. The finding may also be limited in its generalizability to other countries/societies. Follow-up studies can add discussions of other crisis events and compare the similarities and differences in findings. Moreover, the crisis event examined in this study, COVID-19, remains ongoing, so its subsequent progression requires further investigation at a later date.

Since this study has used only the constructs familiar to government intervention to explore reconciliation, in addition to only three strategies employed via government intervention, future research can consider exploration of novel strategies. Furthermore, research on third-party intervention (such as with industrial trade unions or consumer protection organizations) in trust-repair remains lacking. Future research can utilize different roles and other theories to discuss the said intervention.

Conclusions

This study aimed at the following discussion within the context of COVID-19 crisis events: (1) The effect of the public attribution of crisis and government intervention to fix the crisis based on the public’s willingness to reconcile. (2) The effect of the public’s willingness to reconcile based on their intention to share reconciliation-related information. And, (3) Whether willingness to reconcile mediates the relationship between attribution, government intervention and the intention to share. Analytical results show that both controllability and stability positively significantly affect people’s willingness to reconcile, while constructs of government intervention—affective repair, functional repair, and informational repair—can positively and significantly affect people’s willingness to reconcile. Furthermore, people’s willingness to reconcile has a positive effect on their intention to share. Lastly, willingness to reconcile mediates on the relationships between the five constructs of people’s attribution and governmental intervention and people’s intention to share.

Based on the findings of this research, it is recommended that government bodies should develop appropriate, practical and transparent strategies such as a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for a specified crisis to mitigate or even to eliminate the chance of recurrence of a major negative event such as COVID-19. Furthermore, governments should also sincerely apologize to the public for unintended exposure to the occurrence, provide financial/material compensation; and, more importantly in a prescriptive sense, they should provide accurate and timely information so that the public can grasp the government’s immediate handling of the crisis. It is only by doing so that people would be willing to accept the government’s reconciliation and then share the government’s reconciliation-related information, thereby ameliorating how governmental bodies will effectively deal with the crisis event.

Footnotes

Appendix

Appendix A.

Questionnaire Items.

Construct	Item	Source
Locus of causality	I think that the potential impact of this crisis event (e.g., tourism or inability of hoteliers to operate normally) is due to governmental negligence.	Matikiti et al. (2019)
Locus of causality	I think that the government should be responsible for the potential impact of this crisis (e.g., tourism or hoteliers not being able to operate normally).	Matikiti et al. (2019)
Controllability	I think the government can take precautions to avoid this problem.	Matikiti et al. (2019)
Controllability	I think the government can plan ahead and solve problems as they occur.	Matikiti et al. (2019)
Stability	I think the same problem is not likely to recur in the near future.	Matikiti et al. (2019)
	I think it is very likely that the problem will be solved.
	I think the problem is something which changes over time.
Affective repair	I think the government has offered a sincere apology.	Xie and Peng (2009)
	I think the government has taken into account my feelings in responding to my complaint.
	I was impressed by the sincerity of the government in providing a public statement of apology.
Functional repair	I have specific compensation from the government.	Xie and Peng (2009)
	I think the government has a financial responsibility to compensate for this incident.
	The government has given me substantial concessions on relevant measures and services.
Informational repair	The government has responded to this incident.	Xie and Peng (2009)
	The government’s response contains the necessary information.
	The government has provided me with the information I need about this incident.
Willingness to reconcile	I am willing to be reconciled by the government.	Aquino et al. (2006); Tomlinson et al. (2004)
	I think the reconciling of the government can also help to reduce negative emotions towards the incident.
	I think the reconciliation of the government has repair my trust.
Intention to share	When other members of this community have questions about the reconciliation, I am willing to offer advice.	Bilgihan et al. (2016); Hosany et al. (2016)
	I would like to share my reconciliation experience with the community.
	I would like to recommend and share reconciliation information with community members that is worth noting.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study has been supported by the National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan under grant number NSTC-111-2410-H-239-013-SSS and NSTC-113-2410-H-239-004.

ORCID iDs

Jyh-Jeng Wu

Kuang-Ming Kuo

Data Availability Statement

The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Roles of Attribution and Government Intervention in the Trust Repair Process During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Plain language summary

Keywords

Introduction

Conceptual Development

Trust and Trust Repair

Attribution and Trust Repair

Locus of Causality

Controllability

Stability

Government Intervention and Trust Repair

Affective Repair

Functional Repair

Informational Repair

Reconciliation and Intention to Share

The Mediating Role of Willingness to Reconcile

Research Method

Measures

Data Collection and Sample

Data Analysis

Results

Descriptive Statistics

Measurement Model

Structural Model

Mediating Effect of Willingness to Reconcile

Discussion

Theoretical Implications

Practical Implications

Limitations and Future Research

Conclusions

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iDs

Data Availability Statement

References