A global crisis is a sudden, severe, and widespread disruption of human and material conditions. Examples include the financial crash of 2008, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic. These events have a deterritorialized impact and often require supranational institutions with descriptive legitimacy to respond. They also compel individuals to trust these institutions and accept their authority over them, even when national or international guidelines are at odds (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic “herd immunity” policy of populist EU governments against WHO guidelines).
Governments responded to the global financial crisis by lowering interest rates; increasing spending to stimulate economic activity; guaranteeing deposits and bank bonds; purchasing ownership stakes in dysfunctional markets; and taking other steps to ensure the stability of the global financial system (e.g., a massive expansion of quantitative easing). These measures prevented a global depression and averting much-broader economic damage but left millions without jobs or homes, and many economies recovered far more slowly than previous recessions that were not associated with a global crisis.
Consumers’ perceptions of how their country handled a global crisis vary by the extent to which they believe it was caused by or could have been prevented by actions by national or international institutions. Such differences in causal attributions can have profound implications for consumers’ well-being, as they can affect the degree to which they believe their governments and other institutions deserve their trust, and on their psychological and behavioral responses to global crises. Future research should explore these implications and examine how different levels of trust in national and international institutions influence citizens’ willingness to follow their guidance during a global crisis.