A global crisis is a situation that exceeds the jurisdiction of local communities (i.e., nations) and can be resolved only at a global level (Biggs et al. 2011). Examples include the 2008 financial crisis, ISIS terrorist attacks, refugee crises in Europe and elsewhere, environmental disasters such as wildfires and floods, and the COVID-19 pandemic. These events are complex and interlinked, creating a “network of risks” that threatens global economic stability and well-being.
The impact of these events can be felt across borders, and national political, social and business leaders often struggle to find a way out of them. While economists and social scientists have a long tradition of investigating the consequences of these shocks, it is only recently that the business/marketing discipline has also started to take up this challenge.
Despite these efforts, there is still an urgent need to improve our understanding of how consumers respond to the impacts of global crises. We believe this is partly because most marketing research on these issues is carried out by researchers from other disciplines and has not yet been integrated with existing knowledge about the management of global risk.
This article takes up this challenge and finds that, during a global crisis, consumers’ perceptions of the severity with which the crisis affects their community (i.e., country) relative to others around the world are an important driver of blame and trust in international and national institutions tasked with managing the crisis. Furthermore, they predict public adoption of crisis-preventing behaviors that safeguard consumer well-being.