Background and Objective: Crisis communication strategies, with an emphasis on modern communication technologies, play a key role in improving communication effectiveness and stakeholder trust in crisis management in Iranian organizations. This study evaluates the impact of crisis communication strategies on stakeholder trust and satisfaction.
Method: This is a descriptive-survey study with a quantitative approach and an applied purpose. The statistical population included senior crisis management managers in the Red Crescent, Farajah, emergency, health, and IT-related departments of metropolitan cities (N unknown; estimated > 2000 people). Using the available purposive sampling method, 121 electronic questionnaires were collected from the calculated Cochran volume (n = 384). The 55-item questionnaire localized from reliable studies (CR > 0.7, AVE > 0.5) was analyzed with PLS-SEM structural equation modeling (SmartPLS4; SRMR = 0.018).
Findings: Crisis communication strategies have a positive and significant impact on communication effectiveness, and new technologies also enhance this effectiveness, which ultimately significantly increases stakeholder trust. Crisis communication strategies including preventive, reactive, and restorative measures showed the greatest impact on communication effectiveness. Technologies such as social networks, real-time information, data mining, and artificial intelligence improve the speed, accuracy, and transparency of communication. Communication effectiveness is the main predictor of trust; the direct path of technology on trust was not significant, but communication effectiveness plays a positive mediating role.
Conclusion: Combining crisis communication strategies and new technologies is the most effective solution for increasing effectiveness and building sustainable trust among stakeholders, which allows for faster, more accurate, and more coordinated responses. Organizations must deploy native AI platforms, continuously train their workforce, invest in infrastructure, and manage the challenges of traditional manager resistance, budget constraints, lack of technical expertise, data security, integration, and privacy; this research provides a new basis for future policies and planning in crisis management.